The meeting was held on November 23 on Ciołka street campus. This is the second meeting in a cycle of meetings with experts in medicine and health sciences, decision-makers and leaders of healthcare in Poland, dedicated to students of nursing at the Faculty of Health Sciences. It was organized by the Department of Fundamentals of Nursing at WUM. The meeting was attended by students in their first-cycle studies.
Monitoring performance in the profession comes first
Supervision over the performance of professionals is the primary function of the professional self-government. The most important legislation applicable to nurses and midwives is the Profession Act and Professional Self-Government Act. The Nurse Profession and Midwife Profession Act was promulgated in 2011 and work is currently pending on its new shape, taking into account the changes that have occurred since, specifically in the field of new competences such as drug prescription.
One of the claims presented by the Board is to regulate the provisions on Polish language proficiency by foreigners interested in working in Poland. – This is necessary for a person to be able to perform orders, communicate with patients and with other members of the nursing team – Mariola Łodzińska said. – People not speaking Polish can be a source of multiple issues, such as those relating to proper supervision over their work. Therefore, we wanted to include the same provisions in our Act as those existing in the Act on Physician’s Profession, such as those stating that our Board will organize a Polish language exam – she said.
About the ethics and protection of the profession
Another role of the National Board of Nurses and Midwives is to promote the rules of ethics in the profession. Mariola Łodzińska spoke about the new terms added to the Code of Ethics upon request of the profession’s representatives. These are related to evaluating each other on social media. Compliance with this principle is mandatory for all the representatives of the profession.
The Board is responsible for protection of the profession and well, so that they respond strongly to all cases of publications which are harmful or offensive to the professions, specifically in various websites. – We have to bear in mind that not only nurses and midwives view these pages, but also patients, their families, or representatives of the Ministry of Health – president Łodzińska said.
What other functions does the Board have?
They develop the professional standards. Among the standards already in existence, there is the postoperative care and dialysis therapy standards. Work is pending on the standards of nursing care in psychiatry. The professional self-government sets the directions for development of nursing, they integrate the profession, they deal with health education and promotion, and they issue opinions regarding the public health status.
– I have no time for creative work, – the speaker laughed – for designing the future of nursing in Poland, for building a strategy for 15 years, because we are involved in putting out urgent fires all the time. She spoke about protests concerning salaries, or the rule of one person on duty at hospital wards.
Finally, the students had the opportunity to ask questions. They asked about the no-fault system, mentoring, working in the military. Other topics for discussion included new competences, such as ordering tests, temporary disability certification, professional independence, and intertwining competences.
The first meeting in the cycle was held on April 18, with the following guests: Piotr Bromber, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Health, and Edyta Gadomska, deputy director at the Ministry of Health Department of Medical Personnel Development. More
