Remarks by President McAleese at the Irish Nurses Organisation’s 90th anniversary conference
Remarks by President McAleese at the Irish Nurses Organisation’s 90th anniversary conference Wednesday 4th November 2009
Dia dhíbh a chairde, and thank you for your very warm welcome. I am very pleased to be here with you today as the INO celebrates 90 years working for nurses and midwives. I would like to thank you Sheila and Liam for inviting me to join you today as you Celebrate Nursing and Midwifery in Ireland, reflect on the past and prepare for the future.
No-one could argue with celebrating. I can still remember over fifty years ago, as a child, the knock coming to my grandmother’s cottage half-door in rural Roscommon, she taking off the apron, reaching for her hat and coat from behind the door and heading off on the bike to attend to a woman in labour. She was neither a nurse nor a midwife but simply someone who by force of circumstance, personality and skill had become an unofficial assistant in the delivery of babies. Facilities and resources were then rudimentary and not just for maternity. Today, my sisters, her granddaughters follow that vocation but like you they do so after years of basic and continuing professional training and they have the backdrop of working in fine hospitals with other highly trained professionals and outstanding technological support. The changes wrought in health care have been monumental since that far off day in 1919 when twenty women came together to form the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Union. They had a cause to lift health care of the patient to a new level through the improvement of inadequate working conditions and the raising of professional standards. From that modest beginning grew the powerhouse that is today’s INO, the largest nursing and midwifery union in the State.
My primary school was wedged between the Mater Hospital and the Nurses’ Home and so a familiar sight was the file of magnificently starched nurses in their immaculately crisp uniforms going on and off duty. It was then and for a long time an exclusively female profession; the discipline was as tough as in any army though the barrack-like building that was the Nurses’ Home was the scene of occasional good craic and fun when Matron was not on the prowl. For these professional women, the INO was an important champion of their right to equal treatment and equal pay. In more recent decades it has played an important role in the many changes in nurse education and specialisation, with increased input from the universities and a greater gender balance as more men choose nursing as their profession.
Even as Irish nurses were helping to strengthen and develop the health care sector at home, the rigorous nature of their selection and training made them prized employees all over the world and they have made a particularly important contribution to nursing care in developing countries where their education, expertise and dedication have been an important leaven and source of hope. In that tradition the INO is now facilitating Irish nurses who want to share their expertise with colleagues in Uganda and Ethiopia, places where endemic poverty and disease reduce quality of life and life expectancy to levels not seen in Ireland in over a century. In recent years the international dimension of Irish nursing has not all been a one-way street. Today many excellent nurses from outside Ireland, in particular from countries such as the Philippines and India, have thanks to INO’s partnership with other agencies, been successfully integrated into Irish health care and Irish community life where their contribution is highly valued and respected.
From a time when our people had very modest expectations of our health care system we have rapidly arrived at a situation where our expectations and ambitions are high. Public expectation allied to constant innovation, upskilling financing, and technological development are reshaping the delivery of health care and these things impinge on your lives every day. There are wonderful examples where nurse or midwife-led services have been developed – palliative care, care of the older adult, stroke care, diabetic care for pregnant women – and we have seen the nurses and midwives move beyond the traditional hospital location to a variety of roles including community-based settings in psychiatry services, GP surgeries and midwife-led birthing units. Further developments to support holistic care are planned, including increasing the nurse’s role in prescribing and diagnosis. Back in 1914, Florence Nightingale said “"unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it, we are going back"”. The INO has never permitted itself the luxury of standing still but has been an important driver of change itself and the pace of change. I congratulate all the stakeholders, including the INO, whose reforming zeal has given the public the reassurance that our nursing profession is educated to and practices to the most exacting of international standards every day of the week.
We can be justifiably proud of the significant advances in the quality of the nation’s health which have been achieved with your help and we can be proud too of the Irish nursing profession’s legendary reputation for truly empathetic care. Anybody who has experienced the care and professionalism of Irish nurses will no doubt agree with the saying “nurses are angels in comfortable shoes”! Your work brings you deeply into traumatic times in patient’s lives. They need your skills and rely on your ability to help them get through an infinite variety of circumstances from the safe birth of a healthy child to the pain-free death of a terminally ill centenarian. In between those poles there are a million ups and down, joys and disappointments, miracles and tragedies. You are there to be the sound, educated hands and hearts of nursing care. Your profession and your 90 year old professional organization can reflect on a heartening and high-achieving past. Now as you prepare for the future through and beyond this vale of woes that is our economic recession, it is worth setting your sights on the further shore as the founders of this organization did nine decades ago. They might not recognize the modern machinery, the treatments, the text-books or the training models but they would still know good nursing when they see it and we in Ireland are fortunate to be able to say, they would find that, for it is the norm. Equally sure is that fact that they would also find their profession doing what they did ninety years ago actively working to make the profession better so that patient’s can experience even better care. I wish you a very happy 90th birthday celebration and continued success in the future. May you enjoy each other’s company, enjoy the look back at the history of nursing and midwifery in Ireland and I wish you the very best for your plans for the future of the profession. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.