Cost-effective caring

Cost containment is the key issue in healthcare systems and a key concept that nurses must grasp in this time of shrinking budgets and growing demand for health care. As healthcare budgets come under increasing scrutiny, nurses must prove their cost-effectiveness. To ensure the maintenance of quality care, national nurses' associations have a strong role to play in supporting research efforts into nursing's real worth (not only in cost terms) and gathering and disseminating this information to demonstrate the value of quality nursing. To get nurses worldwide to campaign for cost-effectiveness, ICN will focus on "Quality, Costs and Nursing" in its celebration of International Nurses' Day in 1993.