Professor Anne Clancy (Uit, The Arctic University of Norway) gave an oral and poster presentation at The European Federation of Nurse Educators conference (FINE) 21st to 23rd of February 2018 in Malta. The oral presentation, described nurses’ preparedness to deliver care to children with complex health care needs (CHCNs) in Europe. Prof Clancy discussed the differences in the nursing qualitifications that are required by European countries for nurses to care for CHCNs in the community; gave an overview of the content analysis of the nursing curricula documents for content on child care, paediatrics, and the care of children with CHCNs; described the European standards in general nursing programmes for delivering care to these children; and identified possible breaches of optimal nursing education for delivering care to children with complex needs. In short, Prof Clancy demonstrated that in 17 of the EU/EEA countries, no specialised training was needed by nurses to care for CHCNs in the community; and there is considerable variation across Europe in terms of curricula focus on nursing children. MOCHA has identified a real need to promote specialist paediatric training for nurses to enhance the skills and competence of the nurses who care for children living with complex conditions. This work will be available as a paper by Prof Anne Clancy, Dr Elena Montañana Olaso, Prof Phil Larkin and Prof Maria Brenner.
A Poster entitled Nurses’ preparedness to deliver care to children with complex care needs: An integrative review by Dr Elena Montañana Olaso, Prof Anne Clancy and Prof Phil Larkin was also presented at the FINE conference. This gave valuable information on how to enhance the nursing care of chldren and their families by giving insight into areas where nursing knowledge and training needs can be improved, so that nurses can meet the needs of these children.