Every year on 18th May, we ce lebrate European Cancer Nursing Day – our excellent work, empathy, knowledge, kindness and strength. It’s pretty heavy work sometimes, isn’t it? But we all love it and we are cancer nurses from the depths of our soul and heart because this field of medicine can’t be done without it.
What comes next?
Did you enjoy your day? ECND is a time for celebrations but for us, the cancer nurses, it is more. It is the time to think about what our next steps shall be, to think about how we can develop our skills, how we can develop our recognition, and how we can push ourselves forward. We can also think about the obstacles we need to overcome to achieve our goals. What could we do for better recognition of oncology nursing in our country? What would we like to speak about?
Building recognition and specialism – in the Czech Republic
We were thinking about our recognition in the Czech Republic in 2018. We realised back then that we had no recognition. We had one big dream – to create oncology nursing as a specialism. We have only one specialisation of nursing – internal medicine and... as you know, it’s such a huuuge field! How could you be the specialist in each subfield – cardiology, nephrology, oncology, gastroenterology, etc.? We needed a separate education framework for adequate training in oncology. The nurses from our departments of oncology have no special education which can prepare them for our tough work. We are doing our best, we are trying to educate ourselves, but what we really want to have is a comprehensive educational programme for cancer nurses, such as the EONS Cancer Nursing Education Framework. So, we translated it and we were amazed! It was exactly what we needed.
Advocating for the needs of our cancer nurses
Then, at the end of 2018, we found a great opportunity on the EONS website: “Become the hosting country for the ECND celebrations!”. This was a chance for EONS to come to our country, where the General Assembly and Working Groups meetings would take place, and, we would have a chance to advocate for the needs of Czech cancer nurses with stakeholders from EONS and our National Government representatives.
There was no time for hesitating. We applied and hoped that EONS would choose us. And they chose us! We were excited and nervous. We knew that we would have to invite stakeholders who will advocate for our needs and also stakeholders from the Government. Everything went perfectly. On the 17th May 2019, all parties met around the table. There were stakeholders from EONS (President Lena Sharp, EONS President and Advocacy Working Group Chair Patrick Crombez), as well as stakeholders from our Government, and nurses and physicians from the Departments of Oncology who were advocating for our mission. And I have to say - it was a very successful mission!
The key meeting that made it happen!
The green light!
The EONS representatives were an amazing support for our discussion. We explained the reasons for our need for recognition of oncology nursing and better educational opportunities and the stakeholders from the government agreed with all our plans. They gave us the green light to create the Expert Working Group, which will be working to achieve our vision.
And do you know what? Our Czech specialisation in oncology nursing, based on the EONS Education Framework, is nearly done. Isn't it amazing? I know that things sometimes don’t move as quickly as you would like to, but don’t let yourself be discouraged! You have to speak up and keep going for as long as it takes for things to move. Be sure that you have the best partner for it – EONS is always here to support you in better recognition of oncology nursing.
An ECND we will never forget – Czech cancer nursing took a big step forward!