Remarks by President McAleese At the Opening of the 39th EDTNA/ERCA Conference
Remarks by President McAleese At the Opening of the 39th European Dialysis and Transplant Nurses Assn./European Renal Care Assn.
Dia dhibh a chairde and thank you very much for your very warm welcome. My thanks too to Anne Murphy, chair of this year’s organising committee, for the kind invitation to be here with you all today and to open the 39th European Dialysis and Transplant Nurses Association/European Renal Care Association Conference. This is the first time that Ireland has been given the honour of hosting this important conference and I am delighted to extend the traditional céad mile fáilte – hundred thousand welcomes - to you all and especially to those of you who have travelled long distances to be here.
Being selected as hosts for this conference was not Ireland’s only related claim to fame, for as many of you may know we also had the immense privilege of hosting the 6th European Transplant and Dialysis Games in August this year. Ireland’s soccer team may not have made it to the World Cup in South Africa this year but we were one of the twenty four countries that competed successfully at the games here in Dublin. Over three hundred athletes sharing that special common transplant bond came to Ireland to compete but, more importantly to show their respect and gratitude to the donors and donor families by exuberantly celebrating the gift of life. The spirit of those athletes was inspiring. Their health and success was a stunning showcase of what kind of life is possible for the people you meet every day as they cope with serious illness and are helped back to health thanks to your skill and the miracle of contemporary treatments.
This is your 39th conference – that is a lot of talking and sharing, of gathering to problem solve together, of working out the next step to best practice and best patient outcomes. There have been a lot of steps since your first Conference thanks to a professional culture of restless curiosity, scholarship, research and innovation, all directed at doing your best for those who depend on your care. The theme of this years conference “Moving forward together: Education and Innovation in Renal Care” reflects words used many decades ago by that pioneer of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale who said "Unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back." As you take this opportunity among others to advance your professional thinking, to update, to reflect, to reimagine and to distil the experience of nurses from all over Europe, I think we can be strongly reassured that the momentum is entirely forward and that you are in the vanguard of today’s professional nephrology movement.
As patron of the Irish Kidney Association, I know that kidney disease has no respect for age, sex, family circumstances or social background. Although a common health problem, for each patient and family, that diagnosis, opens up a chapter in their lives that they are not prepared for. Suddenly they face a very complex situation with a shocking degree of personal vulnerability. It is into that lonely space that you choose to venture, to be the person who accompanies them on this rough part of their life’s journey with the surefootedness of a guide who has been here before and knows how to navigate what is to the patient unknown territory. Because of the nature of the illnesses you deal with, you will get to know these patients well over a significant period of their lives for they will spend a lot of time in hospital and many hours on dialysis. You will become familiar faces to them and their families and you will be called on to supply many different kinds of help and support. You work as part of a multidisciplinary team and so you have to work fluently within that team with its range of professions and skills, personalities and peculiarities. Out of that team has to come an even and integrated focus on the patient capable of seamlessly addressing his or her physical, clinical, dietary, social and emotional needs. In back of the practical everyday things you do, you also have to help patients to understand their condition and to live full lives with it, in spite of it. You will be with them when they become disheartened as they wait for a suitable donor, or distressed when they see time running out. You will be with them and their carers as they give thanks for a successful transplant and try to balance their joy with the profound sorrow that comes from knowing their new organ came at the cost of another life. That indebtedness to the generosity of a stranger or an unknown grieving family will stay with them for the rest of their lives and will for many be an ongoing challenge to use this second chance well. How they get through this roller coaster will be partly down to themselves and partly down to you and those they encounter in the field of renal care.
Your international collaboration with colleagues and associations is utterly essential to ensuring best practice, best care. Each day at work your experience layers up to a skill, a wisdom and an intuition which is harvested at conferences like this and gathered so that it can feed the widest possible audience.
There are delegates here today from over 60 countries. Many disciplines are represented including renal nurses, nutritionists, renal technologists, social workers and renal pharmacists and many more besides. Over the three days you will hear about the research and treatment in kidney disease, new technology and innovation in the treatment of Chronic Kidney Disease. You will have the chance to tell what you know and to listen as others share their ideas and experiences. No-one here has all the answers but each of you has your own unique piece of the jigsaw puzzle we need to put together to understand this field better than we did yesterday. You help educate the public about transplants so that organ donation can become a mainstreamed idea that we are well-prepared for especially as donors.
I thank each and every one of you who dedicate your lives to this important vocation. I especially would like to thank the organising committee for putting together this event and I wish you all a very successful conference. I hope that you leave here renewed and strengthened in your vocation and with happy memories, new friendships formed and old ones rekindled. I hope too that our international delegates have an opportunity to see the city and perhaps further afield, to experience some of our landscapes, heritage, Irish hospitality and sense of fun.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir. Thank you.