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The annual meeting of the World Federation of Critical Care Nurses

Written by Wouter de Graaf Saturday, 29 September 2007 03:46

From august 12 till the 17th John Albarran and Wouter de Graaf represented EfCCNa at the annual meeting of the World Federation of Critical Care Nurses. The meeting was held during the Intensive Care conference which was organized in collaboration with the South African Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Burn Society and Trauma Society in Sun City; 200 km northwest of Johannesburg.

We had a wonderful time and experienced a warm welcome by the South African CNN society. At the conference John gave a presentation about family witnessed resuscitation based on a European study and Wouter participated in a pro and con debate about enrolled nurses in the ICU which was very interesting. Even in Europe not every country has an official CCN education most of them have nurses working in the ICU with a form of a theoretical/practical education and in some countries enrolled nurses are also staff members. In South Africa there is a recognized CCN education but most of the nurses who work in the ICU are not trained which means that the system needs to be changed. The conclusion of the debate was that a system fails if it brings both patients and nurses at risk!

At the meeting John and Wouter presented their proposal of a new organization of the WFCCN based of 5 pillars; namely the five established worldwide federations: Europe, South America; Africa, Asian Pacific and North America. EfCCNa supports the collaboration with so many other individual countries and their national CCN organizations. Still there is a strong believe within EfCCNa that the WFCCN cannot continue the way it is being run. The attendance of representatives is not high enough and a quorum is not always present so there is no possibility of decision-making. In the meantime the apologies are acceptable due to shortage of money or manpower. Therefore, the board of EfCCNa suggests that in the future each federation can be represented by one or two members of their council which will stabilize the WFCCN as an organization. In the next few months the new elected board of WFCCN and the EfCCNa board will have a further discussion on this item which will lead to a proposal for the next meeting in Mexico, in October 2008.



Wouter de Graaf
EfCCNa President

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