Image and leadership
• Nursing is regarded as a low status occupation and has a poor image not only with respect to
society in general but within the health care system itself. Midwifery suffers from an even larger
problem of status and image.
• Nursing programmes are usually forced to recruit students with low passing grades in general
schooling.
• Image and status problems are accentuated by the powerlessness of nurses to make decisions
about their profession, and to communicate articulately and with confidence in the planning and
decision-making arenas that are of relevance to the nursing contribution to health care.
• The lack of good role models and opportunities for mentoring at all levels—in the clinical field,
education, management, planning, policy development and leadership—is a major obstacle in
developing a competent and confident nursing and midwifery workforce.
• Leadership and good managerial skills are severely lacking in all sectors of nursing: education,
service, regulation and the development of the professional organization. Few opportunities have
been available for nurses to develop and exercise leadership skills, and the value of having well
prepared senior nurses functioning in a collegial and collaborative fashion in the different sectors of
health and health professional education is little recognized.
Strengths
• Motivation and high commitment to improve nursing and midwifery
• Initiatives such as the creation of the Iraqi Nursing Association and the development of centres of
continuing education.
• Existence of education at the masters and PhD levels
• Establishment of the Nursing Department at the Ministry of Health
• Support received from the international intergovernmental and other international organizations

Amer are you a writer too?

After all we are talking about IRAQ. Isn't this the place where they kill people that aren't from their tribe, or they have women cover their faces, walk behind their men. Speaking of which isn't this the place where in human practices occur daily? In America, nursing was looked upon as bad because nurses took care of the oposite sex, naked, now we are respected, intellegent, caring, hard working and honey, we carry the brunt of poor jokes, poor doctors and poor attitudes like your posting, May God be with you, bless you and His countenance shine upon you.

Wha?! ggrannie & kenji, did you read the same post I did? Amer's post about nursing being a low status occupation has some relevance in the US--have you seen Grey's Anatomy or House lately? All of the docs doing all of the nursing care and the nurses as bit characters who come in only to get yelled at or screw up. We don't see nursing like that but that's because we ARE nurses. This is how the general population views nursing though because, unless they've been in the hospital overnight, they only know what they see on the TV shows. See this site: http://www.nursingadvocacy.org/news/news.html

Amer says " powerlessness of nurses to make decisions about their profession, and to communicate articulately and with confidence in the planning and decision-making arenas that are of relevance to the nursing contribution to health care. • The lack of good role models and opportunities for mentoring at all levels—in the clinical field, education, management, planning, policy development and leadership—is a major obstacle in developing a competent and confident nursing and midwifery workforce" Don't your state and union nursing organisations fight for this kind of stuff all of the time? Shouldn't we expect this to be a problem in an invaded, war-torn country like Iraq as well?

Read the whole post, Amer doesn't need to lighten up, these are issues for all nurses globally (www.icn.ch). I don't get the dark ages reference at all

ggrannie said:

After all we are talking about IRAQ. Isn't this the place where they kill people that aren't from their tribe, or they have women cover their faces, walk behind their men. Speaking of which isn't this the place where in human practices occur daily? In America, nursing was looked upon as bad because nurses took care of the oposite sex, naked, now we are respected, intellegent, caring, hard working and honey, we carry the brunt of poor jokes, poor doctors and poor attitudes like your posting, May God be with you, bless you and His countenance shine upon you.

In Dubai,less are arabc nurse

Philipine n India are common

and Here (Dubai) ,they respect us....!