Inspiring nursing leaders of the future

It is critical that leaders in nursing are recognised, encouraged and educated for their roles. In increasingly complex healthcare, leadership and management of the professional aspects, as well as clinical matters, should be led by those who can inspire others to follow. As regular readers of The Clinical Services Journal will be aware, a small UK based charity, Friends of African Nursing (FoAN) spends time assisting Ministries of Health in a variety of African countries to train and up-skill nurses who have little access to continuing education. Leadership is a critical component of the courses, which FoAN delivers. To date, the charity has educated over 1,200 nurses in nine different African countries since 2001.

Nursing and midwifery in Africa

The World Health Organizations’ African region published its ten year strategy for the development of nursing and midwifery in 2007. It states that nursing and midwifery services are one of the main pillars of healthcare delivery. Because the services provide a platform for scaling up health interventions tackling poverty related diseases, further investment in the development of quality services that maximise health gains requires attention. Effective systems for regulation, education, evidence-based research and performance management are keys to strengthening the contribution of nursing and midwifery services in order to achieve the required improvement in health outcomes. When their skills are utilised to the full capacity, nurses and midwives have proved that they can cut costs and improve the quality of care within a variety of differing healthcare contexts.1