Policy Dialogue meeting with Elizabeth Iro

A policy dialogue meeting was held at the WHO CC UTS on 8 October 2020 with WHO’s Chief Nursing Officer Elizabeth Iro and Karen Daniels, Technical Officer from WHO Headquarters in Geneva to discuss the impact and reception of the State of the World’s Nursing (SoWN) Report in Australia, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Palau, Samoa, Bangladesh and Singapore. A total of 24 attended with WHO counterparts from Singapore, Bangladesh and Japan, and members from the South Pacific Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer’s Alliance also joining the meeting.

The SoWN report released earlier this year provided key information about the nursing workforce profile globally, and it estimated that there is a global shortage of 5.9 million nurses in 2020. The report also highlighted the need to increase graduation rates in order to replace the one out of six nurses that are due to retire in the next ten years.

SPCNMOA is an excellent model, and that active engagement with the WHO WPRO and SEARO offices is good to see
- Elizabeth Iro

The participating representatives discussed areas to be prioritised from their country-based data from the SoWN report, and next steps toward policy creation. Karen Daniels explained that policy dialogue is supported by WHO and they have developed a set of materials/tools to assist nursing and midwifery, giving examples of the meeting planner, and a country profile guide that she outlined briefly.

The country representatives split into two sub-groups for conversation – one with Asian representation, joined by Karen Daniels, and the other with representation from the Pacific, joined by Elizabeth Iro, and discussion focused on the following questions:

• What are the priority areas for nursing in your context?
• How the SoWN report been received, within your context?
• Has there been a discussion of the report amongst nursing leaders and/government officials?
• Have you been able to access your SoWN country profile?  If so, is the data presented clear, and has there been any discussion of this data, amongst yourself, your colleagues and other nursing leaders in your setting?
• Have you considered hosting policy dialogues on the priority areas for nursing in your context, and if so what support would you need to make this possible?

The representatives also had a chance to talk about how the report was received in their country and extent to which it has been discussed among nursing leaders and government officials. 

Skills Development Training Program for Pacific Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officers held last year September 2019 at WHO CC UTS convinced Solomon Islands to place more emphasis on the need for data collection for human resources for the nursing workforce.  Recommendations made at that program are still current.
- Michael Larui

The meeting was an excellent opportunity to discuss the use of the SoWN country profiles as a tool to inform policy that will help western pacific countries reach the WHO’s goal for nursing workforce and the senior leaders from WHO gained useful knowledge from colleagues in the Pacific and South East Asia regions.

Elizabeth Iro added that she and Karen Daniels are open to progressing some of the issues raised regarding leadership and regulation, education and training with colleagues from the Pacific, particularly the big agendas that are needed to strengthen nursing and midwifery and fill in gaps for regions. 

Both Mrs Iro and Ms Daniels felt that the meeting was a good opportunity to reengage with colleagues in the region and has shown that some of the Pacific countries present are ahead of many other countries globally and the work done already should be celebrated. They agreed to keep the dialogue going and to work with WHO WPRO and countries in the region on the identified priority issues.