22 Jun 2007

Summer Conferrings at UCC, June 22nd

Two hundred and thirty five students graduated today (June 22nd 2007) at the conclusion of the two-day Summer conferrings at UCC.

Twenty seven students were conferred with the degree of Master of Business Administration (MBA).  There were nine BSc Honours Nursing (Intellectual Disability) and twenty five BSc Honours Nursing (Psychiatric).  Sixty students graduated with a BSc Honours in Nursing Studies whilst one hundred and fourteen graduated with a BSc Honours Nursing (General).

The Conferring Address was given by Professor Kathy Murphy, Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, NUI Galway (attached).
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CONFERRING ADDRESS by Professor Kathy Murphy, Head of the School of Nursing
and Midwifery, NUI Galway at Conferring of Degrees, University College, Cork on June 22nd 2007

I am very honoured to be asked to address you today, an occasion in my view for celebration, pleasure and pride. The journey to today has, I am sure not always been an easy one and I am sure your success today is in no small measure due to your hard work and tenacity and a lot of love and caring from your families. The start of your professional career is an important milestone on a road of lifelong learning.  I felt, never one to miss the opportunity, today was also a good occasion to celebrate not just your success but also to celebrate nursing.

In Ireland we are justly proud of the caring tradition in Nursing; it is a tradition where compassion and empathy are mixed with knowledge and skills. Many of you will have been motivated to nurse by a belief in the importance of helping others and that interest in others is in my view essential to the essence of nursing.

Sometimes it is very hard for the outsider to see the complexity and skill of nursing, indeed from an outside view sometimes what we do may seem routine and mundane. However, we know that there is nothing mundane about nursing. Nurses work with people when they are often at their most vulnerable, they support and help people through the experience of illness, they may help a person do what they cannot do for themselves. This personal care is at the heart of what it is to be a nurse. To help a person through these experiences and to maintain their dignity and integrity is indeed skilled. As nurses you are in my view in a very privileged position, trusted with a person's vulnerability and I believe passionately in the power of nursing to make a difference to those we care for and their families. Much of the research links patient satisfaction to the quality of the nursing service. It is in my view the art or skill of nursing, the way we act in our practice that helps to make the difference to people.

Making a difference to people however is challenging. Practice environments today are complex and ever changing. Nurses work within the community, in residential homes and in hospitals. Nurses therefore need a range of skills. Nursing education must develop practitioners who are caring and analytical.  Nurses, for example, need to be good teachers to promote wellness, they need to be able to make complex clinical decisions and judgements, be flexible and they need to work in a range of environments.  This means that while caring is at the heart of nursing, for nurses to make a real difference they also need a sound diverse knowledge base. Competence is undoubtedly based on knowledge and while caring is at the heart of nursing, caring without knowledge is no more than good intentions. Of course knowledge without caring makes a nonsense of what it is to be a nurse.
 
I believe your have chosen a stimulating and important profession. There have in my view never been more opportunities in Irish nursing. The Irish health services are undergoing a period of transformation. There will be an increasing emphasis on primary care, home based services and an evaluation of practitioner roles. Nurses will be central to the transformation process and will have a key role in service delivery. The number of advanced nurse practitioners needed to deliver services will increase to an estimated 10% of the nursing workforce. These changes bring about challenges and opportunities for nurses; I believe we should be at the forefront of these changes, shaping them to ensure that the services deliver the best possible care for people.  In the past Nursing has been viewed as an occupation of selfless dedication. I believe that today it is a profession which is skilled, compassionate, dynamic and committed to people.

The BSc in Nursing that you are to be awarded today was developed as a result of the recommendations of the Commission on Nursing.  The Commission was very farsighted and the move to degree level education in Ireland is very important, in my view, in providing nurses with the theoretical underpinning necessary to make good clinical judgements and develop the independent learning skills necessary to respond to the future challenges in a transformed health service. The Commission on Nursing also recommended the development of clinical career pathways in nursing, which will open up for you great career opportunities in nursing. You have the opportunity to specialise and advance in clinical practice if you wish to or to develop careers in nursing education or nursing research if this is where you interests lie.  

There are also many further educational opportunities to support these careers.  There have never been better opportunities within the profession for knowledgeable, skilled practitioners like yourselves.  The future looks bright and offers you many career pathways.  Your degree will give you many job opportunities in Ireland and abroad. Many graduates avail of the opportunity to travel in the early years of their career and I know that many nursing graduates have gone abroad and have come back to Ireland with enhanced knowledge and skills which continue to use within the Irish health services.

There is therefore much to celebrate about nursing and in a sense the future of the profession will be in your hands. As a potential consumer of the service in the future, I have a vested interest in ensuring that the quality of nursing is maintained and enhanced. My hope is that the fundamental skills of nursing are recognised and celebrated and that each one of you will have the privilege of making a difference to patients, clients and their families.

I will finish by wishing you all every success in your lives and professional career.

476MMcS