International Council of Nurses

The International Council of Nurses (ICN), which represents nursing worldwide and aims to advance the nursing profession, promote the wellbeing of nurses, and advocate for health in all policies, has become the latest to support the campaign with the following statement:

The ICN supports the Nursing Times Covid-19: Are You OK? campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the potential long-term impact of working through the Covid-19 crisis on nurses’ mental health and wellbeing (and that of other staff and pre-registration students), and to ensure they have access to sources of formal and/or informal support.

• Click here to read about our Covid-19: Are You OK? campaign 

ICN president Annette Kennedy said: “The global shortage of nurses, including the shortage in the UK, meant that the world went into this pandemic with a nursing workforce that was already tired and overstretched.

“As we have seen, nurses and other frontline healthcare workers have done everything that has been asked of  them and more over the past year.

“Their incredible efforts have saved countless lives, but those efforts have come at a great cost to individual nurses who are now paying the price in exhaustion, reduced wellbeing and poorer mental health.

“ICN has long been calling for governments to take seriously the mental health strains that nurses are under. They must honour their duty of care to their precious staff to ensure that they remain mentally well and able to carry on nursing the sick people who rely so much on them.

“So I am pleased to endorse the Nursing Times Covid-19: Are You OK campaign and its efforts to raise the profile of this important issue and demand the proper support that nurses need to get them back to full fitness, and back where they belong, alongside their patients.”

• Read more about the campaign at Covid-19: Are You OK?