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The nurse accompanies us on our journey through life from the womb to the grave. It is the nurse who diagnoses our health needs and helps take care of them in the local clinic, in hospital or in rehabilitation and health care centres. All this she does through direct contact with the patient and his family, displaying a high degree of skill accompanied by feeling for the patient.
Nurses in Israel comprise the major part of the labour force in all branches of the health services and are to be found in urban centres, development towns, kibbutzim and rural settlements, immigrant absorption centres and border settlements.
The nurses of Israel, of both sexes, are organized into a National Association of Nurses in Israel which is affiliated to the Histadrut - the General Federation of Labour in Israel. The Association started out in 1918 when a small group of nurses decided to organize a union. As the years went by it grew in strength. By 1947 there were some 800 nurses organized in the National Union of Nurses and today NANI has the status of a national federation, numbering over 20,000 members including practical nurses, registered nurses and academic nurses, in all branches and specializations of the profession working in hospitals, clinics, towns and villages.
NANI has to its credit a long list of achievements to the benefit of its members and has done much to raise the standards and prestige of nursing in Israel. its members enjoy a 36-hour working week in hospitals and a 40-hour week in other places of work and nursing is recognized as a vital profession. On the educational side, it has arranged for nurses to complete their secondary school education; organized further education and in-service courses and - its crowning achievement - finally succeeded in converting nursing into an academic profession complete with university degree.
The Association has always been a driving force in the absorption of new immigrant nurses and has been successful in finding solutions to the health problems accompanying the different waves of immigration. It has upheld the principal of equality of the sexes in the profession and is currently concentrating its efforts in getting nurses involved in the planning and management of the country's nursing services at all levels.
NANI has been active since 1957 in the International Council of Nurses which was established in 1899 and is the oldest trade union in the field of medicine. The ICN which today represents a million nurses from 97 countries, will be holding its 18th International Congress of Nurses in Israel from June 15-20 and the National Association of Nurses in Israel will have the privilege of hosting the delegates from all over the world who are coming to discuss "Nursing as a Social Force".
