Well it seems that international nurses and nursing students love our congress sting as much as we do. The presentation that I delivered yesterday on students influencing policy at a European level went extremely well. I explained to the audience the collaborative work that the European Nursing Students Association (ENSA) has done with the Federation of Nurse Educators (FINE), the EU and the European Federation of Nurses (EFN). I used these examples to highlight that student associations and networks have very little voice standing alone but working in conjunction with other organisations and mother organisations such as our own RCN, students can influence policy. The RCN Congress sting, in particular my favourite bit of the little people marching together, illustrated the difference made by standing united.

Peter also spoke yesterday on task shifting and the nursing continuum, focusing in particular on the support required for maintaining safety with the changing roles in nursing. The Healthcare Assistant resource was shared with delegates and received as useful tool for both employers and employees.

The plenary session yesterday morning was an inspirational and moving speech by the First Lady of Rwanda, Jeannette Kagame who explained the relationship between educating girls, empowering women and the benefits that this has on developing whole societies. She spoke passionately about the triumph of women in the country in such a short period of time since the tragic genocide. And proudly informed the delegation that within their constitution it is stated the there must be at least 30% of women in parliament which is currently far surpassed at 56% and figure heads such as the chief of police are also female. Her message to nurses throughout the world was our role and duty in advocacy.

Today is the last day of the ICN conference and whilst the exhibition is winding down, the agenda will continue at a fast pace with several seminar sessions on new information technologies in health- tele-nursing and other communication technologies.