12.05.2011International Nurses Day launched with Santeon hospitals

Nurses and paramedics should be enabled to function at a high standard, have adequate training opportunities and be able to work with sufficient and skilled colleagues, so they can offer patients excellent healthcare. Said Health, Welfare and Sports Minister Edith Schippers on 12 May, Florence Nightingale’s birthday, at the OLVG Hospital in Amsterdam, one of the six Santeon hospitals. Here, accompanied by Marian Kaljouw, chair of the Dutch National Nurses Organisation V&VN, the Minister opened International Nurses Day.

The Santeon hospitals are six of twelve healthcare institutions in the Netherlands that have proclaimed excellent healthcare a priority. The Excellent Healthcare approach links up knowledge, skill, involvement in decision-making processes, teamwork, nurse satisfaction and high-quality care. Apart from nurses of the OLVG Hospital, nurses from the other Santeon hospitals followed the opening live over a digital link. This enabled them to give the Minister a message about Excellent Healthcare.

Present
On International Nurses Day, Marian Kaljouw presented Minister Schippers with the first copy of the basic set 'e-Transfer in care', developed by V&VN, Nictiz and Actiz. This 'basic set' can be used by nurses and paramedics to keep a log of the care for patients/clients and transfer it to other healthcare practitioners. The use of a uniform language in the basic set generates a standardisation of data, so people can work safer and make fewer mistakes. This yields a higher quality of healthcare. It is also possible to include the data of this basic set in an electronic healthcare record.

Accessible care
Traditionally, International Nurses Day is celebrated on 12 May, Florence Nightingale’s birthday. In 2011, the international theme of ICN, the International Council of Nurses, was ‘Closing the Gap: Increasing Access and Equity’. In many healthcare institutions, Advisory Bodies for Nurses and Paramedics organised all sorts of activities on and around 12 May.