On the eve of the annual convention held by the Royal College of Nursing Australia (RCNA), RCNA CEO Debra Cerasa says the event’s new format reflects a bright future for the nursing profession.

It’s been an action packed ride for Debra Cerasa, head of the RCNA, Australia’s peak professional nursing organisation and this country’s member of the International Council of Nurses (ICN), since she took up her post in December 2008. Eighteen months into her tenure, Debra now looks back on a period of significant change for the college. For one thing, she has played a key role in the development of a new strategic plan, launched just over 12 months ago in May 2009, and born of working closely with the RCNA’s staff and board of directors to determine a future vision for the organisation.

A key part of this plan is a new direction that defines the college as a leading organisation that “inspires, progresses and promotes nursing”. Covering key areas of membership, policy development, research, professional development and governance, the new vision comprises 38 strategic aims, a third of which have thus far been achieved. The RCNA’s burgeoning membership, boosted by more than 30 per cent over the last 12 months, is particularly significant, signalling an era of optimism for the nursing profession, Debra says.

The revamped 2010 RCNA Nursing Summit, which kicks off next week, also forms a central plank of the college’s new vision. Taking place from 26-28 May in Canberra and sub-titled ‘Minds converging to inspire, progress and promote the profession of nursing’, the summit will tackle long term challenges confronting nursing and healthcare delivery in Australia.

Debra is clearly excited by the changes to the event’s format. For the first time ever, it has been brought forward from its usual September time slot to coincide with the RCNA’s annual general meeting. In addition, the ‘summit’ format is a welcome innovation. Built around interactive panel discussions, as opposed to the more academic ‘conference’ style presentations of previous events, it will provide much needed opportunities for dialogue and information sharing, Debra says.

“When we reviewed the calendar of RCNA events, the feedback we got about the old style conference was that there were all these nurses from different areas attending, but no opportunity for dialogue. There are a lot of conferences out there already, however this will allow nurses from all areas of the health sphere to meet and really interact.”

Following the establishment in November last year of a new nursing think tank, born of the working party advising RCNA and titled New Generation of Nurses Working Party, the summit will also see the launch of the think tank’s schedule of research and activities.

By providing a forum for free and open discussion between the best minds in Australian nursing, the summit will stand the RCNA and the nursing profession as a whole in good stead to deal with the challenges facing the profession, Debra says.

“For example, aged care nursing is a hugely important sector and the summit will see the widest possible range of people from that sector represented, reflecting the enormous diversity of aged care nurses.”

Other key areas for discussion will include the challenges facing rural sector care delivery, as well as the increasingly important role played by nurse practitioners. However, overall, RCNA sees the summit as a key part of its mission to reconfirm nursing and midwifery as vital contributors to healthcare.

And while the Government’s healthcare reform roll out provides “a beacon of direction” for nurses, the summit will also provide an ideal forum in which to bash out some of the concerns entailed in reform. “We absolutely welcome and support reform, but the devil will be in the detail. We want to emphasise that, amide the changes involved in reform, it’s important not to lose sight of the important role played by nursing,” Debra says.

This year and in future years, the emphasis of the RCNA Nursing Summit will be to allow nurses’ voices to be heard more cohesively. “It is about nurses standing tall and proud and being recognised for the huge contribution they make in the health community.”

“More than anything, it’s about bringing back the essence of nursing. Because of the increasingly specialised nature of many nurses, there’s always risk of fragmentation. But if nurses want to be heard, we must position the profession as a cohesive, unified one. For the longer term, this inaugural summit will set the tone as to how the RCNA continues to recruit and retain nurses throughout their careers, from when they start with their Bachelor’s degrees to reaching the highest levels of the profession.”

A nurse and a midwife for more than 35 years who remains as passionate about the profession today as when she first started, Debra seems the ideal role model to steer the RCNA’s vision.

“It’s very exciting to have the ability to make a contribution to the profession I chose to be a part of, leading an organisation that is keen to be a peak professional organisation well into the twenty-first century. As well as having the opportunity to travel to see nurses and midwives all over the world, as the Australian member of International Council of Nurses, it’s wonderful to bring that knowledge back and re-invest it into the Australian nursing profession.”

By Belinda Smart

Copyright NCAH