Strength through adversity: developing resilience though international working

摘要

Nursing is a global profession and International Nurses Day provides an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of nurses around the world. Each year the International Council of Nurses (ICN) focuses a year of activities; last year's was about increasing organisational and personal-resilience (ICN, 2016). This resonated with an ongoing project we have running in Zambia, which assists critical care nurses in developing their own professional support network. The project to develop critical care nursing in Zambia commenced in 2014. A national critical care faculty was formed and since then a variety of projects have been undertaken, such as: developing up-to-date educational resources, developing professional peer support and encouraging strategic developments in order to promote this specialty. Last year, in conjunction with the Ministry of Health, we conducted a national needs assessment of critical care facilities across the country. We found, in many locations, nurses were working independently in often challenging environments as the sole qualified critical care professional (Carter, 2016).