ICN President and President of the Spanish General Council of Nursing meet to discuss nurses’ professional development

ICN President Annette Kennedy has hosted a meeting in Geneva with leading Spanish nurses to discuss advancing the profession in Spain and around the world.

In wide-ranging discussions, President of the Spanish General Council of Nursing (CGE) Florentino Pérez Raya and his colleague Rafael Lletget, who is Head of the Office of the President, spoke with Ms Kennedy and ICN Chief Executive Officer Howard Catton about patient safety, advanced practice nursing, nursing leadership, new nursing skills and nursing ethics.

After the meeting Mr Pérez Raya reiterated the close two-way relationship between ICN and the CGE. He said that nursing in Spain is an advanced profession that has a moral commitment to helping other countries to grow professionally, while still having its own potential to grow in many areas.

"We have always been in complete harmony [with ICN] because we have a common commitment to achieve the worldwide development of our profession," Mr Pérez Raya said.

Ms Kennedy thanked President Pérez Raya and Mr Lletget for their dedication to Spanish nursing and the global nursing family as a whole.

"In our discussions today we agreed to deepen our relationship and collobaration to ensure that we collectively use the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife as a catalyst for change in the decade to come. Together, CGE and ICN are committed to driving positive change for the nursing profession."

Other topics discussed at the meeting were nursing regulation, public protection and the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.