12th ICN Congress, Melbourne, Australia

Nurses in Australia were delighted by the joint invitation from the Royal Australian Nursing Federation and the New Zealand Nurses’ Association to welcome overseas nurses to the Congress. Over 7,000 delegates attended, including student nurses from the USA, Great Britain and Canada. The theme of the 12th Congress was Wisdom and Guidance through Professional Organisation. Congress addresses were delivered by Marie Jahoda and Alice Girard who presented on Nursing as a Profession and The Professional Nursing Association-and You, respectively.

Alice Clamageran (read more) of France was the newly elected president with the Watchword “Tenacity”. She had been closely connected with ICN and attended its international congresses since 1933, as well as representing the nurses of France at ICN Board Meetings since 1946. She had served as President of the Western Nurses’ group, an organisation that served to unite professional nurses’ associations in the countries of Western Europe.

Prior to the opening of the Congress, Agnes Ohlson, in her final report as president, reported to the Grand Council on the immediate ICN future needs. These included increasing membership through assessing countries not yet in membership with ICN and exploring strategies to develop their potential and capability for membership to include periodic evaluation of member associations to determine eligibility for future membership numbers and applications. Finances needed to be increased to ensure ICN remained on a sound footing in the years ahead. Of importance also to ICN was in assisting member countries to develop sound legislative procedures. An important preamble to the ICN Constitution was agreed that:

‘A professional nurse is one who has completed a generalised nursing preparation in an approved school of nursing and is authorised to practice nursing in her own country. Such general preparation shall include instructions and supervised practice in order to equip the nurse to care for people of all ages in the promotion of health and in all forms of sickness, both physical and mental.’

Disaster: Fire on the Ninth Floor

In 1961, a disaster occurred that would have ramifications for nurses worldwide. Nurses would become central to refugee and disaster supports during the coming decades. On the afternoon of 8 December 1961, fire burst out of the garbage chute on the ninth floor of the 1,000-bed hospital in Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, engulfing part of the floor and causing the deaths of 15 persons. Nurses following fire procedures, closing heavy steel fire doors, alerting personnel on the floor and on other floors of the fire and closing patients room doors. It was a tribute to nurses’ and other personnel that more lives were not lost. (ICN 1962)

In a follow-up to this fire, a report was written by Ethel A. Brooks R.N. on Preparation of Nurses for Action in Disaster. She commenced by stating that nurses have a heritage of effective performance in disaster, in war and in great natural disasters and she queried how does it happen that nurses, as a distinctive group, had performed effectively in such situations. Even though patterns of operation differed certain essentials existed. She advocated that nurses needed to be taught principles to help evaluate each nursing situation, exercise judgement and make decisions regarding a plan of action to meet situational and patient care needs in addition to providing health service to families and communities following such disasters. (ICN 1962)

ICN (1962). “Disaster-Fire on the Ninth Floor” International Nursing Review (1962) 9(3):53-54