REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE EORNA
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE EUROPEAN OPERATING ROOM NURSES ASSN.
A Dhaoine Uaisle, tá lúcháir mhór orm bheith anseo libh tráthnóna ar an ócaid speisialta seo. Míle buíochas libh as an chaoin-chuireadh.
Good evening everyone and a warm thank-you to Liam Doran, General Secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation, for his kind invitation to open EORNA’s Fourth International Congress. This is the largest international nursing conference ever to be hosted in Ireland and we are privileged to have participants from all over Europe. I offer to each of you the traditional Irish welcome – céad míle fáilte – one hundred thousand welcomes, and hope that your time in Dublin will be personally and professionally a memorable time and a very fulfilling experience.
Over the past quarter century the European Operating Room Nurses Association has developed from a fledgling idea to a flourishing professional organisation with an outstanding record of shared endeavour in offering valuable help and guidance to perioperative nurses across twenty four countries in Europe.
The theme of the conference, “Perioperative Care: On the Shores of Excellence” shows clearly that the foremost quest of this organisation is the provision of the very best care-environment for patients. This is your field of expertise. You are the day-to-day practitioners of the art of caring and we the public who enter hospital for surgery rely totally on your dedication, your commitment and your skill. It gives us tremendous reassurance to know, through Congresses like this, how much effort is put into sharing best practice, and how important multi-disciplinary and international collaboration is to your search for best practice.
Associations such as yours are vital conduits, vital networks through which information is communicated, disseminated, tried, tested, critiqued and updated. As the key influential voice of perioperative nursing across Europe, you should be very proud of your role in breaking down unnecessary barriers across international frontiers in order to promote a culture of the highest standards of patient care. You can take credit for a litany of important achievements which include many excellent initiatives in practice development, education and research, fresh among them the new web site to be launched at this conference and the journal you are developing to promote the aims of your organisation. Also among them is the Klinidrape Foundation Funded Competition for an Operating Room Nurse in an EORNA member country, to undertake a clinical practice project. It is a source of national pride that Ireland has secured this much coveted prize twice, first with Elizabeth Farell in 2000 and Katie Tierney this year. Comhghairdeas libh – congratulations to both nurses. I know they get the prizes but, in fact of course, we all benefit from their fresh insights into the kind of strategies that work best for the delivery of nursing services to a rapidly changing diverse multi-cultural population.
You have come to this Congress full of curiosity about the job you do and full of determination that, if there is a better way to do it, you intend to find and implement it. Expert speakers will help provoke, stimulate and expand that curiosity. Each of you brings your own wisdom and experience, your own questions and queries to the debates that will take place here. Congress 2006 is the place where best practice for 2007, 2008, and beyond will get hammered out in a reflective but scholarly and professional environment where you can share with one another, and learn from one another, away from the tyranny of hectic work schedules.
Education, scholarship and research has, I know, been an important issue on your agenda and EORNA has been instrumental in promoting the development of a Common Core Curriculum for the education of Operating Room Nurses throughout Europe. It has already been translated into a most impressive ten languages – a strong sign that education is recognised as one of the most powerful development engines at our disposal in the pursuit of excellence.
Ireland, and nursing excellence, have always been synonymous and one of the reasons has been the adaptability of nursing education and its insistence on a strong academic and practical core. We have witnessed a major transformation over the past 12 years – from an apprentice model to a diploma model and finally to a degree programme in 2002. Our first graduates from the BSc (Hons) programme will qualify next month. And the transition to degree level education for nurses and midwives will be completed this year with the introduction of new undergraduate midwifery and integrated children’s/general nursing programmes. These changes speak of a dynamic profession, wholeheartedly committed to a culture of radical ongoing updating and upskilling. This Congress will contribute considerably to that process. I hope you enjoy it, find it exhilarating and return to work with a renewed sense of vocation and full of new ideas on which to build even better perioperative nursing care tomorrow. I hope too you will find here the friendships and the networks which will sustain each of you as champions of change and crusaders for better, and best practice throughout Europe’s hospitals and clinics.
I have great pleasure now in declaring the Congress officially open. Enjoy it.
Thank you all very much.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.