A Commentary on Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare (SBNH) and SBNH Leadership.

The global social upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the peak of the last wave of the baby boom generation moving into their sixties, quickly wreaking havoc among workforces and economies around the world. Canada's health system was no exception, and as demands for care far exceeded the capacity to deliver it, chaos, a frenetic pace and fear permeated every corner of healthcare within weeks.

The Canadian Academy of Nursing: Why It Matters.

The Canadian Academy of Nursing (the Academy) was established in 2019 to provide a focal point for nursing leadership in Canada that had been missing among the 40+ specialty practice and interest groups affiliated with the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). More than 41,000 regulated nurses work in formal administration or management leadership roles, and many of them have shared a worrying array of self-identified gaps in leadership skills and development. This article presents an overview of programs being launched within the Academy to help address these gaps and describes other public policy priorities being addressed by the CNA.

A Century of Political Influence: The Evolution of the Canadian Nurses Association's Policy Advocacy Agenda.

The Canadian Nurses Association has a long-standing history of strengthening the nursing profession and the health system, supporting professional practice, and advocating for healthy public policy at the local, national, and global level. Historical writings have typically focused on the significant milestones achieved throughout the past century, and the various social, political, and economic contexts that have shaped the evolution of the association. While historical sources illustrate an organization with a strong track record of policy advocacy leadership and presence, there is little literature that has examined how the association's policy advocacy agenda has evolved overtime. Using Shamian's emerging "Bubble" Theory and Spheres of Policy Influence Model as an analytical framework, the authors use historical archives and documents to examine the internal and external drivers that have shaped the association's policy advocacy agenda over the past century and conclude that the Canadian Nurses Association has established itself as a credible leader in shaping not only nursing but also health-care and public policy at the local, national, and global level.

Medical Assistance in Dying: A Review of Canadian Regulatory Documents.

After years of heated debate about the issue, medical assistance in dying (MAiD) was legalized in Canada in 2016. Canada became the first jurisdiction where MAiD may be delivered by nurse practitioners as well as physicians. Experience has revealed significant public demand for the service, and Canadians expect nurses to advocate for safe, high-quality, ethical practice in this new area of care. Pesut et al. offer a superb analysis of the related Canadian nursing regulatory documents and the challenges in creating a harmonized approach that arise in a federation where the Criminal Code is a federal entity and the regulation of health care providers and delivery of care fall under provincial and territorial legislation. Organizations like the Canadian Nurses Association contribute to the development of good legislation by working with partners to present evidence to help legislators consider impacts on public health, health care, and providers. Nursing regulators across Canada responded quickly to the unfolding policy landscape as the federal legislation evolved and will face that task again: In February 2020, the federal government tabled legislation to relax conditions related to MAiD requests that will force regulators and professional associations back to public advocacy and legislative tables. The success of the cautious approach exercised by nursing bodies throughout this journey should continue to reassure Canadians that their high trust in the profession is well placed.

The Canadian Nurses Association: Reflections on the NCLEX-RN through the Lens of Nursing History and Evolution.

Decades of work by professional associations, regulators and educators have produced an ethical, reliable, robustly educated and regulated nursing workforce that enjoys high levels of respect in Canada and around the world. The officers of the Canadian Nurses Association comment here on the organization's history and changing role in regulatory policy over the past decade during the introduction of the American NCLEX-RN examination as the assessment tool for entry-to-practice for Canadian registered nurses. Facing forward, to maintain a strong, trusted nursing workforce the association remains committed to meaningful collaboration among nursing's professional, regulatory, education and union sectors.

A very human being: Sister Marie Simone Roach, 1922-2016.

Sister (Sr.) Marie Simone Roach, of the Sisters of St. Martha of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, died at the Motherhouse on 2 July 2016 at the age of 93, leaving behind a rich legacy of theoretical and practical work in the areas of care, caring and nursing ethics. She was a humble soul whose deep and scholarly thinking thrust her onto the global nursing stage where she will forever be tied to a central concept in nursing, caring, through her Six Cs of Caring model. In Canada, she was the lead architect of the Canadian Nurses Association's first code of ethics, and her influence on revisions to it is still profound more than 35 years later. In this paper, four global scholars in nursing and ethics are invited to reflect on Sr. Simone's contribution to nursing and health-care, and we link her work to nursing and health-care going forward.

Yes we can! Eliminating health disparities as part of the core business of nursing on a global level.

Nurses in the 21st century are being called to rise to new levels of practice, including a more influential leadership at senior levels of policy development. Decades of research, good will, and a revolutionary civil rights movement have not resolved the world's staggering health outcome disparities. Nursing has a solution: Many of the most troubling disparities are amenable to effective intervention by the world's nurses through their clinical and policy work. The author challenges nurses to imagine the impact on global health if the elimination of disparities is the core goal of nursing for the 21st century. Moving from individuals and communities to systems levels, nurses must be versed in a range of system-level vital signs that affect policy development including economics, demographics, and access to care. Setting our sights on the elimination of health disparities offers a rallying point around which nursing can coalesce and set human health on a new and more equitable course.

Healthcare, race and diversity: time to act.

Nearly 40 years after the enactment of civil rights legislation in the United States and following a generation of multicultural policy in Canada, the vast majority of nurses in both countries are still female and white. But while nursing remains starkly segregated by gender, it is hardly alone among the health professions in its under-representation of visible minorities. Physicians and other caregivers find themselves in similar positions--they do not always reflect the communities and patients they serve.