The importance of nursing in healthcare systems

Abstract

Nursing is an international, contemporary, dynamic and vital component of health systems. Like other health workers, nurses contribute to protecting and promoting health; preventing illness, injury and disability; alleviating suffering and palliating illness; and restoring health and productivity. However, social, economic and political structures too often undermine nursing and other health workers’ competence, confidence, and authority, and thwart their keenest endeavours to serve the people in need of care and cure. For centuries now, nurses and midwives have listened, observed and acted where action was needed, and, when faced with unmet need of such proportion, made loud that voice. And, for centuries, the answers have been variations on the same theme of deference, disdain or downright hostility. Even today, in the early twenty-first century, nurses, particularly younger, female, marginalised and migrant nurses, continue to experience this. Compounded by structural inequalities of gender and social class, their attempts to push for reform rarely gain traction.