We all know great leadership when we see it. Outstanding nurse leaders, guided by a moral compass, simultaneously see the big picture and the consequences at micro level. While policy and politics determine health and nursing practice, most nurses just want to get on with their day job. They carry out decisions made by others but have little say in them, and weak influence or status, although they are increasingly knowledgeable and skilled. In settings where policy decisions are made ‐ parliaments, governments, and boardrooms ‐ nurse leaders are often neither heard nor heeded. This is starting to change. The global Nursing Now campaign is working with the International Council of Nurses, and the World Health Organization, to create and strengthen strategic nursing leadership, as modelled by the International Council of Nurses’ Global Nursing Leadership Institute. A new window of opportunity is opening, with the bicentennial of Florence Nightingale's birth in 2020. Now is the moment!
Global health matters to every nurse everywhere. In this article we outline why. We highlight some important health issues confronting the world today; explore how these issues are being tackled; and consider the implications for nursing. We describe how nurses are making a difference in the challenging contexts, range and complexity of nursing work round the globe, and we conclude with a call to action. Nurses can influence, and become, policy-makers and politicians, and explain to them why the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be reached without strengthening nursing. In this International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, the window of opportunity is open, but it will not stay open for long. Nurses and midwives globally and locally must be ready to jump through it. We ask you to join hands, and join us.
We live in challenging times, for the planet, for our societies and for the health of nations. The challenges have major implications for nurses-a global profession of some 23 million women and menfrom caring for older people to halting infectious disease epidemics, reducing mother and child deaths and tackling and mitigating the health effects of climate change.The challenges confronting nurses are remarkably similar worldwide, and so are their humanitarian values. We see this daily in our work as international nursing leaders and activists. The value of nursing to health and society has barely been explored or quantified outside its own professional circles. Despite all the lip service, our potential to improve health and well-being has never been fully acknowledged or developed.Our experience also bears out the observations of sociologist Celia Davies that "nursing internationally has often occupied a mar-
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