How the nursing profession can contribute to sustainable development goals
Intended for healthcare professionals
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How the nursing profession can contribute to sustainable development goals

David Benton Chief executive officer, National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Executive Office, Chicago, US
Franklin Shaffer Chief executive officer, Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools International, Philadelphia, US

As of 1 January 2016, the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) became the focus of global efforts on a wide range of development agenda. The SDGs have subsumed the work of the UN millennium development goals (MDGs), so it is timely to reflect on the contribution made by nurses and midwives, so that we can optimise the profession’s contribution to the 17 SDGs. This article reports the results of a scientometrics analysis of the published literature related to the MDGs and SDGs indexed in CINAHL, which identified the underlying themes addressed by nurses and midwives. It shows how analysis demonstrates that although nursing was slow to engage with the MDG agenda, it has made some progress in contributing to SDG scholarship. So far this contribution has been narrowly focused, but the profession could contribute to all 17 of the SDG goals. Routine updates of the analysis described here could help monitor progress, identify gaps in nursing’s contributions to the goals, and provide further impetus to its engagement in this major global policy initiative.

Nursing Management. 23, 7, 29-34. doi: 10.7748/nm.2016.e1534

Correspondence

dcbenton.swiss@gmail.com

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Conflict of interest

None declared

Received: 20 May 2016

Accepted: 06 June 2016

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