• Collaboration with the Flemish Association for Sterilisation and participation in an educational program in the sector of sterilisation in the hospital of St Jan in Bruges, Belgium. Our members-nurses were trained for a 10 day period in the Central Sterilisation Department of the hospital and attended several educational courses.

• Celebration of the European Day of Perioperative Nursing with the despatch of posters and informative leaflets relating to the hygiene of the hands to all the private and public hospitals in Greece. Organisation of events in Athens and Thessaloniki with lectures that stressed the contribution of the practice of washing the hands in the safety of patients. Publication of an article in the GORNA magazine "Perioperative Nursing".

• Reestablishment of the Sterilisation Committee of GORNA and organisation of one day seminar for Sterilisation on May 31, 2008, that will take place at the National Institute of Research in Athens.

• Cooperation of GORNA with the Greek Institute for Hygiene and Security and the Medical School of the Democretean University of Thrace with the aim of researching the working conditions and their effects to the health and security of staff working in operating theatres. The results of the research will be made known to the Greek Ministry of Health and other public bodies with the ultimate aim of raising the issue and the taking of preventive measures.

• Cooperation with the Portuguese Association of Operating Room Nurses and scheduling for May of an educational visit of GORNA members to hospitals in Portugal.

• Within the premises of the educational events we are planning one day seminar for Perioperative Nursing on June 21, 2008 that will take place in Larissa.

• The 19th Conference of Perioperative Nursing will take place on October 16-19, 2008, at Rhodes Palace Hotel on the island of Rhodes.

Currently the managers at the University hospital are interviewing every nurse.
They haven't come up with reasonable offer, and have not been able to break down the consensus. Every nurse that are able to (not sick) are quitting their jobs or 96 of 104 nurses are leaving the hospital first of May 2008.

The Safe Surgery Saves Lives project will be formally launched at a major global event to be held at the WHO Regional Office for the Americas (AMRO/PAHO) in Washington D.C., USA.

Date: 25 June 2008

Venue: Pan-American Health Organization Headquarters
525 23rd St. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037

This event will be hosted by Dr Mirta Roses Periago, WHO Regional Director for the Americas and attended by Ministers of Health, world experts in surgery, anaesthesiology and nursing and leading representatives of health-care associations. Keynote speakers will include Dr Atul Gawande, leader of the Safe Surgery Saves Lives project, and Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for England and Chair of the WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety. The event will video link with the initiative's pilot sites around the world and will feature endorsements received from professional associations and societies in support of the "WHO Surgical Safety Checklist" (a tool for surgical teams around the world, to ensure that patients undergo the right operation at the correct body site, with safe anaesthesia, established infection prevention measures and effective teamwork for safer care.)

For more information on Safe Surgery Saves Lives please visit: www.who.int/patientsafety.

To register your interest in attending the launch please send your details to whopatientsafety@who.int. Please note that WHO shall not be in any position to cover for the travel or accommodation expenses of the participants except where previously expressly agreed.

Not only in Denmark are nurses fighting for pay increase and better working conditions. Nurses in many other countries in the EU face similar challenges. That is the message from the European Federation of Nurses' Associations' General Assembly in Copenhagen.

Several European nurses' organisations are struggling a historical fight for pay increases and better working conditions.

In Copenhagen, members of 28 European nurses' organisations are together and they represent approximately 1.5 million nurses at European level. Many of the organisations face the same kind of problems, stated EFN President Grete Christensen in her opening speech of the General Assembly:

“In Finland they had successful negotiations which resulted in pay increase of 22 – 28% for a four-year period. However the result was only a reality after a tough struggle. In Sweden the negotiations have just broken down, just like we in Denmark are expecting a conflict from next week. In Germany they have just concluded the negotiations for the public employed nurses after some long and difficult negotiations”, said Grete Christensen who is also first vice-president of the Danish Nurses' Organization.

Grete Christensen stated that recruitment of new and retention of experienced nurses are two serious challenges on the European labour market. Recruitment and retention will be a growing problem in the years to come, not least in Denmark.

“Many nurses apply for jobs in the private health care sector as the pay and the working conditions are considerably better here. This trend will be even more common, unless our members employed in the municipalities and hospitals during the present collective bargaining get a significant pay increase of 15% for the coming three-year period. We are way behind compared to employees in the private sector with the same level of education, and the non-existing of equal pay is unsustainable when we want recruitment and retention of competent employees”, she says.

The most important news from Iceland is that at this moment Icelandic surgical nurses are in struggle with the University Hospital. Almost all nurses are quitting their job at first of May it is because the hospital wants to pay less for more work. They want to change the shifts in a way that compromise our patient's safety. We would like to have your support and hope you and your colleagues will not apply for work in University Hospital in Iceland during this struggle.
We did celebrate the perioperative day by meeting were we had lecture about hand hygiene and we had a visit from an artist. He spoke about how to bee happy during work. After that we had a very nice dinner and spent good time together.

Helga Guðrún Hallgrímsdóttir

Actions since autumn meeting in Brüssels

The Danish board has been busy making plans for the national congress October 2008.
We have promoted Mölnlycke Health Care Scientific Award by mailing promoting material to most of the Danish hospitals.
We will have a perioperativ nursing day April 2th (the plan was made long before the EORNA perioperativ nursing day) and one of the subjects will be how to handle overweight patients in the theatres
The LOC of the EORNA Congress 2009 have been doing a lot of work. One of the discussions this spring are among other things how to make the member associations promoting for the congress visible so that it will be clear that the congress is an EORNA project and not just a Danish project.
Networking operating room nurses in Denmark. Encourage the Danish nurses to tell all European OR nurses about all the good work in Denmark. Danish nurses are not used to submitted abstract and s on.
This spring we are going to make new agreements with the employers about salary and working conditions. Unfortunate there are a big gab between what the nurses want and what the employers will give. So we will very likely have a strike in April or May.

Anette Pedersen
FS SASMO
Denmark

The new website of Cyprus Operating Room Nurses Association - CORNA - is open since the beginning of february 2008.
The link is www.kysynox.com/kynox or click on the flag above.
Contact : Korina Demosthenous

As follow up on our support to the Finnish nurses, we can congratulate them in achieving a very good result after a long and hard struggle with the employers and the government.

On Monday 19 November, Finland's Union of Health and Social Care (TEHY) approved a conciliation settlement proposal which gives a pay increase for nurses, among others, ranging from 22 to 28% in the next four-year agreement period. This implies 350-650 EUR extra in the members' pay packet during the coming four years. A great part of the pay increase will become effective from the beginning of the period agreement.

The agreement averts the mass resignation campaign of 12.500 nurses which were planned to be effective from 19 November. Finnish hospitals are returning to their normal routines as from Monday.

An EFN news : read more here

Our Bored member first meeting was in the beginning of September. That meeting was very constructive and we discussed about the all year program.

We have our usual groups meetings: head nurses and their deputy, clinical instructors and OR representatives.

This year we have a lot of meetings and congresses.

On the 6/12/2007 our association member are invited to the anesthetist's congress. We have there a separate room for the OR nurses program.

0n the 21/12/2007 we have our first IPNA Friday meeting in TEL AVIV. The main issue is aspects of transplantation.

We would have two more Friday OR Nurses meeting over the year.

In Israel we have every two years a congress it called – The Israel Medicine Week. This year it will be on the 11/03/2008. Our association members are invited to that congress. We have there a room for OR nurses program that organized by IPNA.

We are also going to celebrate the OR European Nursing day. We would have a central evening celebration that would be organized by our association, additional to the celebration at every OR.

Our goal congress will be on the 04/06/2008. We still not decided of the Main subject.

Yael Edry
IPNA Chair person

Sandra Morton was elected as new chair of the Section, Teresa Cummins remains as secretary. Kay Nagle was elected as vice-chair. Marie Woulfe and Caroline Higgins remain as EORNA reps. Anne O'Callaghan retired from planning committee. Anne O'Brien completed her terms of office also and received an award at ADC for her contribution over the years.
Following the recent industrial dispute a task force is reviewing the payment to nurses under a benchmarking process, this is to be completed within 6 months.
A 37.5 hour week will be introduced pending stipulations in June 2008. The Section commissioned and published their Health and safety in the Operating Department Book
The next INO Operating Department Conference will take place in Ballinasloe, co Galway on April 4th and 5th 2007.