“Primary Care is at a standstill; we must promote a new strategy”. That’s what it sounds like Jose Ramon Martinez-Rieraprofessor at the University of Alicante and president of Association of Community Nurses (AEC)spoke about the current state of health center situation across the State and to reverse it, has called for promoting a new Primary Care strategy in 2019 to, among other things, complete the implementation of the role of community nurse in health centres.

Martínez-Riera has intervened this Monday Nurses in community care: an international viewl, which is celebrated in Pamplona and which Over 260 professionals from Navarra have signed up. The AEC President argues that in order to have “quality and accessible” Primary Care, it is necessary to start Strategic Framework for Primary and Community Care –developed by the Ministry of Health– “once and for all in all autonomous communities”, a strategy whose implementation has also been referred to by Minister of Health of the Foral Government, Santos Induráin, at the opening of the day.

One of the aspects contained in this new strategy for Primary Care is updating the profile and competence of community nurses, and in this regard, Martínez-Riera underlined that after the pandemic “the work of community nurses has been disrupted”. “The pandemic has exposed the system’s flaws and among them is that we are not recognized properly,” he said, alluding to terms such as “hero, tracer or vaccinator” that nurses have used over the past two years. “It exposes who we are. Because we are not heroines, film heroes don’t die and we have colleagues who have died. We are professionals committed to our work, but not heroes,” said Martinez-Riera, adding that “It should be clear that if vaccination is successful in this country, it is thanks to community nurse planning.”

International presence

During the day, different conferences have discussed the functions and skills of nurses in Canada or the UK or what the future of Primary Care is in our country. The event was organized by the College of Nursing of Navarra in Baluarte and experts from Canada, UK, Netherlands and Spain have participated, who will analyze the role of community nurses in their respective countries.

The conference was held from 9:00 to 14:30 and was opened by the Minister of Health of the Government of Navarra, Santos Indurain, and the president of the College, Isabel Iturrioz. The session began with the intervention of Gyslaine Desrosiers, president of the Interprofessional Council of Quebec (Canada), who spoke about The nursing profession in community care: the Quebec experience. He is followed by Enrique Castro-Sánchez, professor at the University of West London and Imperial College London (UK), whose conference will discuss Community Advanced Practice in the UK: not just nurses, not just caregivers.

After a coffee break, Gertje Van Roessel, international director of Buurtzorg, a nurse-led home health care company in the Netherlands, takes to the field and explains the history of this company and what it means for home health care in your country.

To conclude the session, José Ramón Martínez-Riera, professor at the University of Alicante and president of the Association of Community Nursing (AEC), spoke. Community nurses in Spain: Reference, resource or instrument?.