Global alliance aims to unite student and early career nurses
The International Council of Nurses (ICN) has created a new body representing student and early career nurses, to amplify their voices on key issues affecting the profession.
The ICN announced this week that its board of directors had launched the ICN Alliance of Student and Early Career Nurses.
“The alliance provides a new and keenly awaited communication channel”
Pamela Cipriano
The aim of the body is to enable students and early career nurses to shape ICN policy on relevant issues such as education, making nursing a more attractive career, the profession’s future and climate change.
In addition, it hopes to enhance student and early career nurse influence across national nursing associations.
It comes as many national nursing associations around the world already have a significant number of student and early career nurse members.
The ICN said it was intent on growing their numbers and uniting them through the new alliance.
ICN president Dr Pamela Cipriano said the creation of the alliance was a “bold move” that signalled the her organisation’s commitment to current and future generations of nurses.
She added: “The alliance provides a new and keenly awaited communication channel that will improve dialogue between nurses at the start of their careers and those in more senior and prominent positions.
“It will improve ICN’s intelligence and create the pathway for a new cadre of nurses who are ready, early in their careers, to take on the challenges facing nursing and health care, and to support the changing demographics of the global nursing workforce.”
National nursing associations will be asked to appoint individual nurses as representatives to the alliance, who will each serve a two-year term of service.
In addition, the group will have a steering committee made up of peer-elected representatives from each of the World Health Organization’s regions, led by the ICN’s nursing and health policy team.
The ICN said it was working on transitioning to the new alliance, which it said would be operational early next year.
The body is set to hold its first in-person meeting at ICN Congress in Helsinki, Finland in June 2025.
