Holding it together: the art of collaboration

As our leaders debate just how separate the UK will be from the rest of Europe, nurses continue to try to work across boundaries and borders, physical and organisational, to ensure the best outcomes for patients.

Next year, 2020, is the International Year of the Nurse and it is also the bicentenary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, who many regard as the architect of modern nursing. It is very apt, therefore, that the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care (ISNCC) arrives in London for its conference in 2020 (www.isncc.org/page/ICCN2020).

The ISNCC is a global organisation that represents 60 000 oncology nurses worldwide, either as individual members or via partnerships with national and regional cancer nursing societies. The conference's presence in London represents a homecoming for the ISNCC. The late Robert Tiffany OBE, Chief Nursing Officer at The Royal Marsden Hospital, was a founding member of the society and established the first International Conference on Cancer Nursing in London in 1984.