U.S.-Russian nursing conference on a spectacular cruise ship: St. Petersburg to Moscow August 7 to August 22, 1997

Connecticut Nursing News, Jun-Aug 1998 by Haloburdo, Esther

"All the work that we are doing in the association is very important for elevating the prestige of a nurse-making a nurse feel necessary and important because right now so much is being done to diminish the rights of a nurse. Also I am very happy to say that there are physicians involved. We already have twelve physicians who are nursing educators. They comply with our ideas and are willing to work with us. And they are not only from St. Petersburg but also from other districts in Russia. They see it as all very interesting and want to be in the course of the event."

The nurses told us that physicians are members of their association with the same rights and privileges. The physicians for the most part are also still the educators of nurses, so their connection with nursing is different than in the United States. Since this is similar to the early days of nursing education in the U.S., it was easy to understand the role of the physician in the current system of nursing education in Russia. That the physicians would have an interest in being involved seems reasonable given the changes that are occurring in both nursing education and practice. The physicians we met during the conference were genuinely supportive of the nurses' work and the positive influence it can have on the health of the people of Russia.

We explored with these nurse leaders, their involvement in the political process. They were in the process of building alliances with the physicians to promote their vision for improvements in health care and professional education, illustrated by the following excerpt.

"At present I cannot say that we are doing such things. But we have agreements with, for example, the physicians' association and through these agreements we are going to try to promote ideas which are good for both of us in the duma in our state government."

That the nurse leaders recognized the value of promoting their ideas through various forms of contact and communication was evident in the following quotes.

"Our association works in a very close contact with our Ministry of Health Care and I (the Association President) have meetings with representatives of the ministry practically every month and the decisions that we make in our associations we tell them about so they are well informed. We hold all kinds of conferences and meetings and the decisions that we make at these conferences we tell the ministry about through our publishing, through our papers and through personal contacts."

"An important thing that happened this year was the association determined an ethical code . . . The Ethical Code of a Nurse which was approved by the Ministry of Health Care. And it is recommended for teaching at nursing schools and colleges. The association conducted a seminar for representatives of schools and colleges where the teachers will teach this subject.

"We have meetings of our administration and we discuss the most important current issues. Just recently we have been discussing the new law which is going to be published. . the law of health promotion of the population. This law spoke much about physicians . . . about what we call the physician's secret of not telling the diagnosis to patients, but not a word was said about nurses. And so we included another chapter called `The Nurse and the Public.'And this chapter is now going to be discussed and we hope accepted in the government of our region. Besides, for the last two years, we have been celebrating National Nurses Day which is May 12th. And at our large conferences, we always have that Minister present who says the words of greeting. We publish a colorful paper for that day and we hold competitions of professional skills."