Nanthaphan Chinlumprasert

ICN, the global voice of all nurses, is accountable for advancing the nursing profession, and endeavors to resolve nursing workforce issues, especially nurse shortages, migration, and safety measures for nurses during pandemics, war, and disaster situations. ICN empowers nurses for their rights and promotes a Positive Practice Environment and Work-Life Balance to ensure that nurses are properly deployed to work in their full scope of practice according to their educational levels, knowledge, skills, and experiences in the national health system. ICN endeavors to unite nurses’ voices among multi-cultural/political contexts, different healthcare demands, and common issues about nursing workforce shortage, maldistribution, and poor nurse retention. ICN empowers NNAs to seek the government’s support and to develop valid national nurse census, and database management for national workforce solutions. The issues of health equity, coverage, and accessibility to these opportunities among different stages of country development are challenging. I believe in the capacity and leadership of ICN in strategically resolving these challenges using transformative and visionary leadership, working collaboratively with NNAs and ICN partners.

I envision collaborating with country members in each region to seriously resolve the issues of the nursing workforce, and promote decent work, innovative retention strategy, work-life balance, positive practice environment, fair remuneration, and welfare for nurses. The contributions of nursing to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) must be well recognized by the public, government, global health, and national health system. The disaster nursing competencies and management skills must be strengthened to ensure the effective response of nurses in future disaster or pandemic situations. I envisage deploying inclusiveness to face aging society challenges, transform nursing practice at all levels, close the generation gap, and ageism, and tackle other forms of discrimination including promoting patient safety and improving health for all. Leadership development for young nurses should focus on political communication and negotiation skills. Efforts should be made through ICN student and early career nurse engagement initiatives and the student steering committee that aims to equip young nurses for leadership capacity and ICN involvement. A clear national succession plan for nursing leadership at all levels should be encouraged to ensure the continuity of work at the national, regional, and global levels.

The next ICN board should assess the impact of current initiatives and carry on the ongoing significant projects of the current ICN board to ensure continuity and effectiveness. The innovative plan and projects can then be efficiently launched to meet the ultimate goals of the global nursing profession especially the collaboration for WHO Global Strategic Directions for Nursing and Midwifery (2026–2030). In the digital transformation health and nursing system, the ICN board can exercise its leadership to ensure digital transformation in nursing practice, nursing innovation, and the related roles of nurses. The digital literacy development among nurses in health service systems, education, and management should be promoted. Management Information Systems, health technology, innovation, and AI should be integrated into nursing education, advanced clinical nursing practice, and nursing research.