Rethinking healthcare systems is critical to creating resilient and sustainable healthcare that can navigate the uncertainty of the future. With nurses being the largest section of the healthcare profession, rethinking and empowering their roles and practices is fundamental to achieving meaningful changes.This year’s World Health Summit 2023 featured a session on rethinking nursing and new competency models, with the participation of several EUHA colleagues.
Growing demands on healthcare systems, ageing population, demographics, rising costs, pandemics and the current shortage of healthcare professionals pose significant challenges to healthcare accessibility and delivery. For this reason, EUHA has been actively promoting the need to rethink healthcare systems to ensure the resilience and sustainability of healthcare and properly navigate the future with long-term solutions.
Since nursing practice is a fundamental part of the healthcare system and nurses make up the largest section of the healthcare profession, redesigning healthcare systems implies strengthening nursing as an attractive, independent profession and academic discipline with a sustainable workforce prepared for current and future challenges in healthcare. In that direction, EUHA’s Nursing Network adopted already in Fall 2022 the Nursing Mission Statement, which advocates for the key nursing roles in university hospitals in five priority areas: Professional Identity, Patient Outcomes, Healthy Working Environment, Professional Education and Training and Nursing Research.
Given the significance of this topic, this year’s World Health Summit included a panel on rethinking the nursing practice: New Roles and Competency Models: Leading the Way Toward a Global Nursing Standard. The session is one of several fruitful collaborations of the EUHA Nursing Network and included EUHA representatives and colleagues Carla Eysel (Chief Human Resources Officer and Chief Nursing Officer at Charité – Universtiätsmedizin Berlin & member of the EUHA Nursing Network) and Klara Karlsson (Acting Head of Learning and Development at Karolinska University Hosptial). As an EUHA-driven session, the discussion was very much aligned with the focus of the EUHA Nursing Network.
Carla Eysel and Klara Karlsson shared their insights on the nursing profession within the EUHA settings, representing Charité-Universitätsmedizin and Karolinska University Hospital, respectively.
Carla Eysel focused on the future challenges of healthcare and emphasised the importance of rethinking the nursing profession as a key to securing the basis of healthcare systems of the future. Eysel highlighted the current struggles in attracting individuals to the nursing profession and the potential to reshape nursing through existing legislation and frameworks.
Time for action is now. Existing legislative initiatives give the opportunity to rethink nursing and make a basis for the future of healthcare. Securing future workforce by boosting nursing education and roles, and legal framework will give back hope and security to the healthcare system. Carla Eysel (Charité – Universtiätsmedizin Berlin)
Time for action is now. Existing legislative initiatives give the opportunity to rethink nursing and make a basis for the future of healthcare. Securing future workforce by boosting nursing education and roles, and legal framework will give back hope and security to the healthcare system.
Eysel and Karlsson agreed on the need to challenge existing legislation and frameworks. Their consensus was on increasing nurse autonomy and expanding their scope of practice by creating new roles based on competency. Eysel stressed that these new roles, based on competency, should be integrated into legal frameworks and job descriptions to make the nursing profession more appealing and alleviate the shortages of such a large group of healthcare workers.
Furthermore, Klara Karlsson, emphasised the need for nurses to take charge of operational management, budgeting, and bed management, highlighting their critical expertise in maintaining hospital capacity. Additionally, she presented the EUHA as a shining example of robust European cooperation capable of aligning the nursing profession across Europe and beyond.
The World Health Summit 2023 ttook place from the 15th to the 17th of October, both in Berlin and digitally. The summit provided 60 different sessions which will bring together 100 nations, 300 speakers and 6000 participants. The summit is the world’s leading international, inter-sectoral and inclusive global health conference that sets up the agenda for a healthier future.
About the session:
📢 New Roles and Competency Models: Leading the Way Toward a Global Nursing Standard.
💻 The recording of the session is available here.