On Founding the Journal Nursing Ethics, and the Human Rights and Nursing Awards
From Nursing Ethics, 1880s to the Present (p. 375-381)
Used by permission 2024 © Marsha Fowler
Chapter 11 Notes
Verena Tschudin: On Founding the Journal Nursing Ethics, and the Human Rights and Nursing Awards
One day in 1992 or 1993, the day before going on holiday, I was bringing a manuscript to the Royal College of Nursing in London and by chance met there the editor of several of my books. The building was full of people attending a conference and there was nowhere to sit. My friend and I knelt down against a wall and then she asked me if I would be willing to edit a journal on ethics in nursing that her publisher would like to start. I provisionally agreed, saying that the holiday would present a good time to think about it.
My first action was then to contact my friend Professor Geoffrey Hunt to ask his opinion. He was very hesitant, trying hard to persuade me that this would not be a success. Suddenly, he changed his mind and suggested that I go ahead and he would be my assistant editor. The deal was done, and some 30 years later Nursing Ethics still has the same bright yellow cover and seems to be much read and needed. The editor is now Ann Gallagher, Professor and Head of Department of Health Sciences, Brunel University, London.
While working together, Geoff came up with the idea of establishing an awards system for nurses who do outstanding human rights work as part of their work, without any acknowledgment. Thus, the Human Rights and Nursing Awards were conceived and started as a novel event during the yearly conferences we also started, then at the University of Surrey.
The Human Rights and Nursing Awards were first given in 2001 to three people. Subsequently, they were given in 2003 and 2005, but only to two people each time. In 2005, a group of anonymous donors guaranteed a yearly sum for the Awards, thus making it possible to give the Awards every year; therefore, the next Awards were given in 2006 and yearly since then. In 2014, an anonymous donor set up an investment for the Awards so that a yearly sum (approx. £20,000) from interest can be used for the Awards.
The Human Rights and Nursing Awards are now presented to any nurse in recognition of an outstanding commitment to human rights and exemplifying the es- sence of nursing’s philosophy of humanity to further their work.
The criteria for the Awards are that “The contributions and accomplishments of the nominee must be of international significance to human rights and that the contributions of the nominee have influenced health care and/or nursing practice.” A short overview of some of the awardees follows, although each one of them deserves more attention. Their citations are on the website. I feel hugely privileged to have the chance to know so many outstanding nurses and people over time, while getting them through the selection and to the place where the Awards were given. Every nurse has the possibility to join their ranks.
2001
Karla Schefter, Germany/Afghanistan: She established and still runs (after 35 years in 2022) the best and entirely free-to-users hospital in Afghanistan. This continues with the new Taliban regime since August 2021.
Glenda Wildschut, South Africa: Her special interests were violence, trauma, and torture rehabilitation. She helped to develop a reparation policy for genocide survivors in Rwanda, a reconciliation process in Guinea Bissau, and a church re- sponse to the proposed truth commission in Sierra Leone.
Christine Schmitz, Germany/Médecins sans Frontières (MSF): Her focus was mainly in acute crisis areas. Her most striking experience has been the mission in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica. Together with an Australian doctor, she witnessed the enclave’s brutal taking by the Bosnian‑Serbian army in July 1995. The deporta- tion of women and children and the killing of 8,000 men remain in her memory. Her testimony at the Court of Human Rights in (approx. 2015) was crucial.
2003
Cathy Crowe, Canada: She called for homelessness to be declared a national disaster on the same scale as floods and earthquakes.
Mpho Sebanyoni-Motihasedi, South Africa: She established a hub of care and counselling, skills development, training for caregivers in 80 villages, support groups for grannies, volunteers in the district, and 15 satellites in rural communi- ties at a time when the word “AIDS” was totally taboo in South Africa.
2005
Fidelis Mudimu, Zimbabwe: At the time, the government regularly raided houses, beat up people at night, and destroyed houses and livelihoods. It was dangerous to visit the victims, as he could easily be killed, too. He ran an organization of nurses to “rescue” the victims from their houses and get medical care for them.
2006
Nurses at the St John’s Eye Clinic, Gaza: Hanan Zaálan, Fouad Najjar, Ghazi El Baba, Mohamet Barakat, Abdallah El Baba: This group of nurses at the only eye clinic in Gaza worked (then) in situations of heavy bombing, raids, and lack of communication and any equipment. They were not given visas to collect the Award; the matron of the main hospital in Jerusalem collected the award on their behalf.
2008
Emmie Chanika, Malawi: She served as an officer in the Malawi Red Cross; on a commission to investigate the deaths of four politicians; initiated and founded the Prison Reform Committee; set up a blood donor scheme; served on the Malawi Housing Corporation; is a paralegal officer; and has been the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC) for many years. She said that all this was only possible because she is a nurse.
Sister Teresita Hinnegan, USA: At the age of 80, and after retiring from a long academic career at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, she established safe houses for women who experienced violence and abuse, believing that the structures that condone any violence against women have to be challenged at all levels.
2009
Kathy Mellor, UK: She is a neonatal nurse practitioner, working in countries where health care is severely compromised by lack of education and limited resources: Nagorno‑Karabakh, Armenia, Mongolia, Russia, and Nigeria. She created the well‑known early discharge program for preterm babies and established “Kangaroo care,” now used worldwide.
Branka Rimac, Croatia: During the civil war in 1995, she cared for wounded people in no-man’s land, crossing borders at will. She has since become a leading nurse throughout Europe, establishing links and associations between countries and regions.
2010
Robert Simons, Netherlands: He was Chairperson of the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organizations (IFHHRO), developing its remit and including human rights and advocacy training for health professionals throughout the world, with regional partners in Uganda, India, and Peru.
2011
Ana Luisa Aranha, Brazil: She created and ran a series of restaurants in hospitals and government establishments for nursing, medical, and other staff to work inter- changeably together with mentally ill people to enable them to gain employability. Thabsile Dlamini and Masitsela Mhlanga, Swaziland: This was then the country with the highest HIV/AIDS occurrence, and nurses died from the disease or left the country. These two nurses established special clinics for nurses with HIV. The pair came briefly to the attention of the international nursing press in 2000. Nurses in rural health facilities were being attacked by robbers looking for money. Some members of parliament suggested that nurses should carry arms to work for protec- tion, but they refused, stating that arms would deter the public from seeking health care, and demanded that the government provide protection.
2012
Barbara Parfitt, UK and Bangladesh: She worked in a dozen countries to promote empowerment for women, women’s rights, and the health-care rights of people who are sick, poor, or dying.
Soodabeh Joolaee, Iran: She had single-handedly established ethics teaching in Iran among nurses and doctors, and became the country-wide reference person on any ethical issues.
2014
Rula al‑Saffar, Bahrain: She started and ran a campaign to free all medics and prisoners of conscience. In 2012 and 2013, she was nominated as one of the most influential Arab personalities.
Sister Jyoti Rosamma, India: She was then working among the poorest people in North India, helping them to set up their own businesses and using herbal remedies for their communities.
2015
Eileen Greene, Canada: She started and supported HIV care at Katutura Hospital, Namibia, by creating schooling and soup kitchen opportunities for the impover- ished community living around the hospital.
Will Pooley, UK: He was nursing in Sierra Leone through the Ebola outbreak in 2014. He caught the disease, but returned to Sierra Leone to continue working when he was well again.
2017
Martha Turner, USA: She has done exemplary ethics work in the US Armed Forces and still works in many countries, especially Vietnam. She is the co-writer of the ANA’s new Code of Ethics.
Bernadette Glisse, Belgium: She worked in Cambodia, first among refugees from the war in Vietnam, and was later asked to introduce human rights practices for prisoners throughout the country.
2018
Alice Leahy, Ireland: She is a nurse and former Chairperson of the Sentence Review Group and a former Irish Human Rights Commissioner. She founded the Al- ice Leahy Trust, providing health and related services to people who are homeless and vulnerable. It was said of her that if a homeless person died, they were at least known to God and Alice.
Miriam Kasztura, Switzerland: She worked around the world with Médecins Sans Frontières, and is on their board of directors. She is also heavily involved with the enforcement of human rights in underserved populations in Switzerland whose health-care needs are not met. She is pioneering nurse-led primary care consulta- tion services for assessments, and health-promotion interventions for university students and employees.
2019
Yusrita Zolkefli, Brunei: She was nominated for her outstanding initiatives, both in education and practice, which inspired nurses to embrace ethics and law as part of their daily working life. Nurses learn how to know their beliefs and convictions and those of people with whom they disagree. This is vital for the work of advocacy for nurses. Her work has ensured that all nurses throughout Brunei have the opportu- nity for ethics education, understand the language of ethics, and use it.
Dorcas Gwata, Zimbabwe and UK: She migrated to the UK from Zimbabwe in 1991, first working as a cleaner, then as a care assistant. She is now a visiting Global Mental Health Lecturer at the London School of Health and Tropical Medi- cine and King’s College. Dorcas works as a volunteer with AFRUCA (Africans United Against Child Abuse) and is a strong advocate on safeguarding issues for African children across communities affected by female genital mutilation, human trafficking, modern slavery, and witchcraft branding.
2020
Lisa Brown Gibson, Canada: She has been instrumental in the advancement of the rights of people with mental illnesses and addiction. She founded the Work- man Theatre Project in 1987, now the oldest and largest multidisciplinary arts and mental health company in Canada, supporting artists professionally to achieve their highest potential.
Elisabeth Nishimwe Samvura, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): She is head nurse of the neonatology department at Heal Africa Hospital, Goma. The area has suffered nearly continuous conflict since 2003 and from ongoing Ebola. She focuses on family-centered care, encouraging bonding within the families, reduc- ing the anxiety and post-traumatic stress often experienced by parents in neonatal units. She is recognized as a foremost expert in the delivery of neonatal care in conflict situations.
2021
Kerri Nuku, New Zealand: She is of Tainui descent and is driven by a concern for prevailing ethnic inequalities. She is particularly noted for her partnership working with and seeking to improve the health status of all people in New Zealand through inclusive participation in health and social policy development, and is a collabora- tor in the United Nations Universal Periodic Review and the World Health Organi- zation (WHO) Human Resources for Health Project.
Suman Shrestha, Nepal: He moved to the UK in the 1990s to complete his professional and postgraduate nursing studies. In 1994, Suman opened the first center in Nepal caring for children and adults with intellectual and physical needs, and he remains a key supporter on regular visits. Suman has also been instrumental in the development of critical care both in the UK and in Nepal, and has led on UK na- tional initiatives concerning the management of sepsis and established the strategic redeployment of nurses into critical care working during the COVID pandemic. Suman’s achievements in Nepal are all the more remarkable as they are completed on a voluntary basis and dependent on his own fundraising.
2022 [Author’s Addendum)
Deanna Mezen, UK: As nurse at one of the largest male prisons in Europe (Feath- erstone near Wolverhampton), she was the lead for palliative care where she de- veloped the practice standard Dying Well in Custody that provided for a humane, dignified death with adequate and timely medication, psychosocial support, open cell door, and the presence of family and friends. She transformed the care culture within the prison for those at the end of life, making compassion and excellence of care a normative expectation. She has been an advocate for the men whom society has imprisoned, for veterans in custody suffering PTSD, and is the lead in a Health- care in the Transgender support group.
Ricardo Ayala, Belgium/Chile: A civil and human rights activist and profes- sor of ethics, he has worked for civil rights for those without voice in Chile: for indigenous women, for homeless persons, and for sexual minorities. He has worked for police reform, and against gender-based violence particularly in re- lation to workplace violence against trans nurses. His current endeavors include seeking to expand health coverage for marginalized communities in Ecuador and Belgium. Ricardo is committed to the role of the nurse in relation to human rights and politically informed nursing practice constructed within a socio-cultural and socio-historical background.
2023
Ruggero Rizzini, Italy: A nurse from Pavia in northern Italy, he received the award in recognition of the exceptional contributions that he has made to the development of health and social care in Pavia, Italy and in Guatemala, Central America. He has worked in Italy and Guatemala to raise awareness of the needs of society’s most vulnerable persons. He has worked in St. Gertrudis slum in Guatemala with an emphasis on nursing and health care by opening facilities that promote well-being. Ukraine mental health nurses: Thirty-two nurses from the community mental health teams in Ukraine received the award in recognition of their work in developing mental health services in the country. They were commended for resilience, courage, and resourcefulness for developing new ways of practicing under wartime conditions.
The variety of work done by the nurses who received the Human Rights and Nursing Awards is as remarkable as the people themselves. The money that goes with the Awards is to be used to further the work done by the recipients, but is given as a personal gift, in conjunction with the journal Nursing Ethics, and the recipients are invited to travel to the venue where the yearly ethics conference organized by Brunel University, London takes place to receive the Awards. The coordinator of the Human Rights and Nursing Awards and the members of the editorial board of Nursing Ethics constitute the selection committee.