The International Family Nursing Association (IFNA) developed out of a history of International Family Nursing Conferences conducted every two to three years since 1988. So even before its inception as IFNA in 2009, the international family nursing community had a strong focus on supporting and serving the needs of family nurses and families. The original leaders who proposed the creation of IFNA in a hotel ballroom in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, knew of the need for an organization to promote family nursing and advance family health through strong relationships. The founding members courageously started a new organization committed to building strong relationships. And every member since the founding of IFNA has focused on building strong relationships with our family nursing colleagues. This creation of the strong supportive and collaborative association that IFNA is today is a credit to relationship building over time. IFNA is an association of over 350 members from 36 nations today, making the organization truly global.
We know that IFNA members appreciate their membership because of the strong connections and enduring relationships they build between each other and within the association. In fact, we often hear, “My IFNA meetings are the best part of my week!” and “My connections with other IFNA committee members support me in my family nursing work and help me not to feel alone in this work.” IFNA work creates an international context (often called our ‘IFNA family’) where respect, support, mentorship, sharing of expertise and resources, opportunities for professional development, and family nursing advancement in practice, education, research, and policy abound.
However, everything evolves. The familiar changes while the new blooms. We are talking about the IFNA Strategic Plan. The previous Strategic Plan expired in 2019 and it was time to turn to the members again to ask what they appreciated about IFNA and where or what they envisioned IFNA could grow towards.
In 2019 an Appreciative Inquiry was undertaken and, through this inquiry, we confirmed that IFNA members not only much appreciate each other and their association, but they also have big dreams for IFNA and each other! They want us to be known in a bigger way worldwide and to make an even bigger impact. We are truly living the IFNA Vision of “Nurses transforming health for families worldwide.” We are doing this together!
Our shared understanding of who we are as a family and where we have a vision of moving is seen in the five goals for IFNA defined in the 2020–2025 Strategic Plan that resulted from the Appreciative Inquiry. These goals are to:
- Increase visibility and impact of IFNA and family nursing
- Ensure IFNA sustainability
- Increase membership diversity, reach, and impact
- Sustain member connections and encourage increased engagement
- Increase international collaboration
How will we do this? We will do this TOGETHER!
Your IFNA Board is now reaching out to you, our family, to ask you to be creative in using these five goals to guide your work on behalf of family nurses and family health globally over the next 5 years. This is particularly true given what we have learned about the importance of family care and family nursing during the current pandemic. We will be asking committees to focus on helping IFNA realize the hopes of our members. We are asking you to think about how you can be part of helping us meet our goals. We encourage you to think about the following:
- How can I help increase the visibility and impact of IFNA and family nursing in my daily work?
- How can I help IFNA be financially and humanly sustainable?
- In what ways can I help IFNA increase membership diversity and reach?
- How can I contribute to making connections between members and helping them to be involved?
- What types of international collaborations can I encourage that will enhance IFNA’s reach?
There will be many ways for you to get involved in our IFNA family work over the next 5 years. We are excited to see where we can go…TOGETHER!
Sonja J. Meiers, PhD, RN, APRN, CNS, PHN, AGCNS-BC, FAAN, is Professor and Department Chair at Winona State Unversity, Winona and Rochester, MN, USA. She is President of IFNA and developed this post with Lindsay Smith, PhD, RN, of the Department of Nursing, School of Health Sciences at the University of Tasmania, Australia with contributions from the IFNA Board of Directors. Dr. Meiers’ research focuses on supporting families managinag chronic illness and, most recently, the experiences of nurses providing care for families in the context of the novel coronavirus pandemic. You can follow her on Twitter at @MeiersSonja.
