Should the RCN re-join the International Council of Nurses?

For more than a century the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has endeavoured to steer the profession of nursing in the UK, and not always through calm waters. When the RCN was founded in 1916 the landscape of nursing was very different from that of today, without even statutory state registration, which did not occur until December 2019. It was the former matron of Guy's Hospital in London, Dame Sarah Ann Swift (1854-1937), who first suggested forming an organisation for nurses similar to the colleges of physicians and surgeons (Pearce, 2016) The primary aims of the college at the outset were to:

It is against this backdrop that the RCN is consulting on the benefits to nursing of re-joining the International Council of Nurses (ICN), which it left in 2013.

ICN (https://www.icn.ch) is a federation of more than 130 national nurses' associations representing the more than 27 million nurses worldwide. Its primary mission is to represent nursing worldwide, advance the nursing profession, promote the wellbeing of nurses, and advocate for health in all policies.