2021 World Patient Safety Day

CGFNS Recognizes WHO World Patient Safety Day 2021

CGFNS International, Inc. is proud to recognize World Patient Safety Day 2021. We join with the World Health Organization (WHO) in recognizing their theme of “Safe maternal and newborn care”.

As a leader in standards setting and credentials evaluation for nursing and other allied health professions, CGFNS has long championed efforts to improve standards and promote the dignity of health workers around the globe. As the WHO points out, millions of babies die at birth or are stillborn every year. Over 300,000 women are believed to die during childbirth annually from preventable causes. By engaging stakeholders through community-based approaches and comprehensive health systems, we can begin to solve these problems.

Through our decades of work with nurses across the globe, we have identified the key role of midwifery and the need to ensure standards are met in the countries they serve. To that end, CGFNS created The Professional Midwife Standards and Credentials Committee in 2019. Established in concert with the International Confederation of Midwives, the committee will assess how practicing midwives measure up to global standards and look to help qualified professionals improve their mobility. This committee will inform the newly formed division within CGFNS, the Commission for International Midwifery Graduates, and harmonize ICM’s Global Standards with CGFNS’ operational efforts to help support the mobility of qualified midwives.

Dr. Franklin A. Shaffer, President and CEO of CGFNS International, spoke to the Commonwealth Nurses and Midwifes Conference last year. During his presentation, he emphasized the importance of education and professional standards, something CGFNS has pioneered over the past 45 years through our comparative approach to educational proficiencies, allowing nurses, students, educational institutions, and licensing bodies to measure achievements more objectively to the local protocol.

“Education and training that can be qualified and quantified is the currency for mobility of healthcare professionals and the standards upon which healthcare institutions employ and sustain their workforce,” he told the assembled. Those registered as nurses and midwives have seen a decline in numbers, especially in industrialized countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Health worker mobility becomes even more important as countries that export more health professionals also have worse outcomes in childbirth, due to lack of available staffing and poorer care standards.

CGFNS joins in the WHO’s message to “Act now for safe and respectful childbirth!