12th Annual Meeting of the European Forum of National Nursing and Midwifery Associations (EFNNMA), Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 2008

The 12th Annual Meeting focused on stewardship as one of the four key functions of health systems, together with financing, service provision and resource generation. For the first time two parallel sessions were held the day before the annual meeting, on leadership and quality improvement, with more than fifty nurses and midwives attending. The three key-note speakers described how their own countries, Uzbekistan, Sweden and Scotland, steward their national health system, with a special focus on the nursing and midwifery area. Three workshops discussed nursing and midwifery’s contribution to health systems stewardship During the plenary sessions the working teams presented an overview of their discussion, and provided a feedback on the draft statement on stewardship. Issues such as nursing and midwifery education, leadership and legislation were addressed.