El necesario papel de las Sociedades Profesionales de Enfermería

Abstract

Professional nursing societies initially emerged by imitating the medical model, due to the great development of specialised care and the boom in medical specialities in the 1980s, with great scientific and technological advances that required nurses to be up to date with these circumstances, adapting to a different specification of care in each area. These associations set themselves, among other goals, to bring together professionals with common specialties or interests, exchange experiences, update their professional role and improve the competence of their members. They also started to publish professional brochures and magazines. Many of them, at the time of their appearance, grew thanks to the initial support of doctors who believed in a nursing specialization parallel to their own. An important peculiarity of the professional nursing societies has been and still is that their members voluntarily go to them because of professional interests and promote channels of information and updating of knowledge and nursing practice, as well as new developments in the field of health; they also support, promote and develop continuous training, encourage "specialised" research to contribute to improving the quality of care, strengthen the relationship of the professionals and the association itself with other groups and become a point of reference in the different areas of their influence. Proof of this is the great development that most of these have achieved. However, they have not been cohesive, and coordination between them is a problem, as each one has emerged independently from the others, with no relationship between them and with very varied interests, depending on the groups of professionals who made them up.