Judith Shamian

Interprofessional collaboration, the only way to Save Every Woman and Every Child

www.thelancet.com Vol 384 September 20, 2014 e41 Although substantial progress has been made in maternal and child health since 1990 when the Millennium Development Goals were set, we are too far from achieving the 2015 goals. Scaling up and further progress can be achieved by the end of 2015, but the global community has to challenge itself with setting new goals and targets post 2015. Furthermore, we need to ask the crucial question of what can we learn from the past 25 years so we can inform our next steps and move rapidly; any moment lost leads to additional lost lives of mothers, newborn infants, and children. In the post-2015 agenda, a more integrated approach is needed, particularly with the increase in major health challenges such as non-communicable diseases. The success of this new approach will depend on the close collaboration of governments, global agencies, nongovernmental organisations, health-care and professional organisations, and above all the public. Political, professional, and consumer wills have to prevail with a clarity that saving lives is in our reach and can happen if we put women and children in the centre of the agenda. With the science, the knowledge, the innovations, and the proven successes of how to save lives, we need to work in partnership and collaboratively to get to the fi nish line and eradicate preventable maternal, newborn, and child death. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) has a strong and long-term commitment to supporting reproductive maternal, newborn, and child health. In many countries, midwifery services are provided by nurse-midwives, who are legally licensed or registered to practise the full scope of nursing and midwifery in their country and can provide a broad range of services across the continuum of care. ICN works collaboratively with stakeholders including the International Confederation of Midwives, WHO, Jhpiego, UNFPA, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and others on many aspects related to reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health. ICN has been a member of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health since its beginning and was a founding member of its predecessor, the Maternal Child Alliance. However, ICN needs to walk the talk and get more engaged with global agencies, national governments, and consumer groups. We call on our many partners to help us do so; we owe it to the millions of women, newborn infants, and children who die every year because they do not have access to the right facilities, services, and qualifi ed teams, and it is our moral obligation to be at their side and prevent the preventable loss of life. As the Lancet Midwifery Series shows, interprofessional collaboration is essential to provide quality health care in today’s complex world, and to mitigate many of the challenges faced by health systems worldwide. Patients need the range of knowledge and skills that can only be found in a wide array of health professions. Additionally, collaborative practice must include the patient as the key player in the health-care team. Decisions regarding the appropriate health-care providers need to be part of a broad Human Resources for Health plan that is tailored to meet the country’s needs and context, and addresses quality, equity, and access to care. It is essential that governments have a leadership role in terms of provision of adequate funding for education, regulation, and a conducive policy environment that fosters collaboration among professions. In turn, associations of health professionals have an important part to play to enhance collaboration among professions through their engagement in a policy dialogue and advocacy eff orts at the national and global levels. Nurses and midwives, although major deliverers of Interprofessional collaboration, the only way to Save Every Woman and Every Child

The role of nurses and nurse leaders on realizing the clinical, social, and economic return on investment of nursing care

There is a limited understanding of the significance and the potential contribution that nursing can make through practice, policy, science, and profession to the global health agenda. In this article, we present some of the evidence to demonstrate the clinical, social, and economic returns on investment in nursing. We conclude by addressing the issues that nurse and system leaders need to address in order to achieve these returns on investments, and unless nurses get involved at the leadership level, these returns on investment will not be attained.

Making research integral to home care services.

Home care is the fastest growing segment of the Canadian healthcare system, yet research on patient safety has been conducted predominantly in institutional settings. This is a case example of how Victorian Order of Nurses Canada, a national not-for-profit home and community care provider, embedded a nurse researcher to create an environment in which health services research flourished. This model strategically propelled important issues such as home care safety on to the national research and policy agendas and helped leverage change in multiple levels of the healthcare system. This is a call to action for building partnerships to have a researcher as an integral team member in organizations providing home care services.