The Ninth WHO-ICN-ICM Triad Meeting, 9-11 May 2022

From the 9th to the 11th of May 2022, The World Health Organisation (WHO), The International Council of Nurses (ICN) and The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) hosted their 9th “Triad Meeting”.

Every two years the meeting is held to discuss emerging global challenges Nurses and Midwives face and new priorities to strengthen Nursing and Midwifery towards common goals, particularly Universal Health Coverage (UHC). This year’s meeting, similar to the 8th “Triad Meeting” in 2020, was hosted online, with two daily interactive live-streamed sessions lasting two hours over the three-day period. This encouraged dialogue and collaboration between over 650 government chief nursing and midwifery officers, leaders and representatives of national and international nursing and midwifery associations, and key stakeholders in nursing and midwifery education across the globe. Representatives from WHO CC UTS were in attendance, as were several key stakeholders in nursing and midwifery from the Western Pacific region.

This year’s meeting centred around the Global Strategic Directions for Nursing and Midwifery 2021-2025 (SDNM). The aim of the sessions was to familiarise the participants with the Directions as a tool to expedite progress towards Universal Health Coverage; to strengthen confidence in data reporting to improve workforce management, planning and monitoring; and to improve policy dialogue, investment and advocacy.

The 3-day agenda is outlined below:

Day One – 9th May: The Global Strategic Directions for Nursing and Midwifery 2021-2025 (SDNM) as a pivotal instrument in country contexts for strengthening nursing and midwifery towards Universal Health Coverage.
Day Two – 10th May: The importance of data for national level policy dialogue and decision making.
Day Three – 11th May: The role of SDNM as a tool for policy dialogue and investment.

During the meeting, participants acknowledged and reaffirmed the key issues and challenges our nursing and midwifery colleagues are facing, including challenges resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. All participants committed to six leadership actions on behalf of their entities:

1. Accelerating the implementation of the Global Strategic Directions for Nursing and Midwifery 2021-2025 (WHA74.15) towards UHC. Including the use of drive data as a tool for implementation and monitoring and the involvement of multisectoral policy dialogue to strengthen national and subnational policies.
2. Adopt innovative approaches to strengthen the capacity and management of health workforce teams, accelerating telehealth services and digital education and learning, and increasing interprofessional collaboration, optimizing scopes of practice and upgrading the competencies of health workers, including midwives and nurses.
3. Adopt WHO’s ‘Global health and care worker compact’ to protect health and care workers and safeguard their rights and to promote and ensure decent work, free from racial and all other forms of discrimination, and a safe and enabling practice environment. In addition to implementing the WHO Charter ON Health Worker Safety.
4. Advocate for increased investments in the education, skills, jobs, safeguards and protections of health and care workers, as articulated in the draft Working for Health 2022-2030 Action Plan.
5. Advance support and safeguards in national health systems, aligned with the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, to ensure public and private sector employers ethically manage international recruitment of health workers and for recruiting countries to consider how to prioritize for health personnel development and health system related support, for those countries that they recruit from to grow their nursing and midwifery workforces.
6. Support and reinforce the implementation, as relevant to national legislative and policy frameworks, of the ILO Nursing Personnel Convention.

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