St. Paul’s University in Partnership with the Ministry of Health, Nursing Council of Kenya, Medical Benevolence Foundation (MBF) and Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK) will host the second Nursing Leadership Conference on 13th and 14th June 2019. The two day conference themed “Building Capacity for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership in Africa” Leading Change, Achieving Universal Health Coverage, Achieving Health; aims at empowering healthcare professionals like nurse and midwives to enable them play a leading role and maximize their contributions in tackling major health challenges and achieving Universal Health Coverage.
This is in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 that calls upon governments to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”.
Although the number of institutions offering training in nursing has increased remarkably for the majority of developing nations, there is still inadequate quality training especially that which prepares nurses for leadership roles. There is need to improve training offered to nurses and midwives to enhance impartation of knowledge, skills, competencies and judgement to handle the complexity of health problems in the world today.
Educating, empowering and supporting nurses and midwives to be leaders of change will ensure they have a more prominent voice in health policy-making, will be recruited into leadership positions, and will practice to their fullest potential; hence creating better health outcomes for their countries. Equally, there is need to empower nurses to undertake quality research and to integrate the same into practice to improve the quality of healthcare outcomes. Nurses need to be supported to lead, learn and strengthen their profession. Universal Health Coverage will not be achieved unless nursing is strengthened to own its central role and position in healthcare systems.
The conference activities will include keynote presentations, plenary speakers, breakout workshops and resolutions. It will feature diverse sets of speakers including prominent practitioners and thought leaders in nursing and midwifery as well as health care experts from Africa and the United States of America.