NZNO president and chief executive address ICN conference.

NZNO PRESIDENT Jane O'Malley and chief executive Geoff Annals, along with mental health nursing educator Marie Crowe, were to give a presentation to the International Council of Nurses' conference "Building Excellence through Evidence" in Geneva late last month.

O'Malley and Annals, along with Te Runanga O Aotearoa NZNO chair Sharon Morunga and business services manager Dragan Radic represented NZNO at the conference and the Council of National Representatives (CNR) meeting which followed immediately afterwards. The venue for the conference, from June 27-29 and for the CNR meeting from June 30 to July 2, was changed from Marrakech, Morocco to ICN's home city of Geneva after recent terrorist bombings in Morocco.

Speaking before his departure, Annals said the title of the presentation he, O'Malley and Crowe were to give was Managing strategic alliances in changing political environments. "We will give three different perspectives--management, clinician and educator but there will, of course, be some overlap."

Other New Zealand presenters included Manukau Institute of Technology nursing lecturer Louise Rummell and gerontology nurse Dianna McGregor, both part of a team involved in researching "Perceptions of person-centred care of older people and the related satisfaction of their caregivers within the New Zealand context". Research findings were unveiled at a ceremony in Auckland in March.

Rummell and McGregor were to give a presentation to the conference on the research methodology and findings.

Annals said he hoped Morunga and McGregor would contribute to a panel on cross cultural nursing.

A keynote speaker at the conference was internationally renowned nursing researcher Linda Aiken, much of whose research has focused on the link between nursing numbers and patient outcomes.

O'Malley and Morunga were to represent NZNO at the CNR meeting. Annals said there was just one major issue before the meeting, a new membership fee structure aimed at assisting poorer countries to become ICN members. The previous CNR meeting had debated the three stage membership fee structure based on gross domestic income and this meeting was to endorse it or not. NZNO's board of directors supported the new fee structure.

Annals said he was disappointed the conference and CNR venue had been shifted from Morocco for two reasons. It gave weight to terrorists' actions and a very practical way ICN could assist poorer countries was by holding its conferences in poorer countries.