As an Irish person, I find it rather unorthodox to return to Dublin from Bahrain, my adopted country of employment, to present a paper at the 28th International Nursing Research Congress. Last year’s Cape Town event was a wonderful demonstration of nursing’s internationalisation, and Dublin will serve to further consolidate STTI’s position as a leading global organization in promoting nursing scholarship.
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| Seamus Cowman |
Nursing in Ireland
Ireland is sometimes referred to as the land of saints and scholars, and validation of this reputation is reflected in how international communities acknowledge things Irish: St. Patrick’s Day; our writers Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, and Yeats; and the Guinness. Many of our visiting nurses may not be aware of the strides made in Irish nursing. In 2002, Ireland became a flagship country in Europe by implementing a four-year honours degree programme for nursing. Clinical career pathways followed, and new opportunities for nursing research were instituted.
The papers presented at this conference are strongly rooted in the empirical approach and delivered by nurses committed to nursing research. Therefore, I think a majority of congress attendees in Dublin may share my belief that evidence-based nursing practice is our best opportunity to focus on the growing body of healthcare knowledge. However, best practice can only occur when we find effective ways to address the gap between what is known and what is practiced.
Nursing is embedded in practice, and this opens many opportunities for us all to be more creative in developing effective ways to teach and engage clinicians in research. I have recently been pushing a model of “bedside to bench” as a preferred model for the development of nursing research, and I genuinely believe that the adoption of a bedside-to-bench model can lead to major progress in applying nursing research to patient care.
Middle East nursing
Nursing in the Middle East is in a stage of transition with recognition that indigenous growth of the profession is central to providing health services in the region. In some Middle Eastern countries, the expatriate nursing workforce may be as high as 80 percent. However, an expatriate nurse workforce is a transient workforce. This results in lack of stability, which presents a challenge in establishing and sustaining nursing developments.
Nursing is not an attractive career for young Arabic people, and in Bahrain, where I work as head of a school of nursing and midwifery, I was delighted to be able to initiate a positive promotion-of-nursing campaign. Bahrain is now exemplary in that more than 60 percent of its nursing workforce is composed of nurses of Bahraini origin. Arabic nursing is a much-neglected component of the nursing family, and I encourage organizations such as the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International and the American Academy of Nursing to enhance their efforts to support nursing developments across the Middle East.
In terms of nursing’s future, a quote from Irish writer Sean O’Casey comes to mind: “All the world’s a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”
