First trip to Egypt and first to Africa

DAMANHOUR, Egypt—I imagine emergency departments in Egypt have a thriving “trade.” I had been warned about the driving here but was not prepared for the terrifying three-hour drive from Cairo International Airport to Alexandria. I may have reported what I considered the most terrifying drive ever in blog entries passim, but this one topped the league.

Collected from the airport at 1:30 a.m. after the flight from London, I was taken by people who spoke very little English to an unmarked and battle-scarred car with no rear seatbelt and a pervading reek of exhaust fumes. I had visions of my death certificate with entries of “carbon monoxide poisoning” or “multiple trauma.” I was unsure if I was being kidnapped, taken to Alexandria, or both. Turned out my destination was my hotel in Alexandria, but that became clear only after being driven by someone in contention for the land speed record who was unsure of the route.

To compensate for his lack of direction, he chased and then drew up alongside other drivers, sounded his horn, and then leant over the sleeping passenger in the front seat to ask directions. Meantime, both cars were swerving and nearly colliding. Twice this happened with an intersection looming. I registered 140 kilometres per hour (86 miles per hour) at one point. We arrived at 4:30 a.m., but it was nearly 6 a.m. before my vital signs were within the normal range. I vowed the return journey would not be made in the same manner and emailed my hosts to that effect the next morning.

Alexandria, the second largest city in Egypt and its largest
seaport, was founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great.

– Photo by Zbruch/iStock

Damanhour University

I am here at the invitation of the Faculty of Nursing at Damanhour University, which is approximately 40 miles inland from Alexandria. Alexandria, which is on the Mediterranean Sea, reminded me of Jeddah, except it is more crowded and less of a paradise. You get the impression it will take only a small percentage increase in the number of cars on the roads, and the whole city will grind to a standstill amidst a cacophony of car horns.

Today, my hosts drove me around and then down to Damanhour. Egypt is almost everything I expected. There is an acute sense of entropy here with little aesthetic appeal to buildings, with many of them—especially in the rural areas—leading you to wonder if they are under construction or demolition.

International conference

The Faculty of Nursing at Damanhour University is holding its 1st International Scientific Nursing Conference, and I am the international person. I gave a keynote today titled “The Path to Publication,” and tomorrow I give a workshop on writing for publication. Academic nursing here is organised very differently from in the UK. They have fewer students than we do at Hull, but there are far more staff members, and they are organised into departments around each of the subspecialties, such as paediatrics, and around more general areas, such as nursing management.

The author with Assistant Professor Enas Ibrahim (dean),
Assistant Professor Yaldez Zeineldin, and Professor
Neamat El-Sayed, with Mediterranean Sea behind.

The senior students—the men with suits and purple ties and the women with purple headscarves—acted as doorkeepers and helpers, something I could not imagine our own students being expected to do. This demonstrates a striking cultural difference among students I have seen in the Middle East, the Far East, and Southeast Asia. The students were fun, and my jaws ached from posing for hundreds of camera shots and selfies. It must also have been a slow news day in Damanhour, as three television channels interviewed me.

My first visit to Egypt—my first also to Africa—ends in the small hours of the morning after tomorrow. I have had to compromise on the return journey and accept being driven in a hired car with a qualified driver, as opposed to the university driver who initially collected me and whose driving is legendary. I cannot imagine a slower driver, but seatbelts are promised. I have not seen the pyramids or the Sphinx, but I have made some new friends who are planning to have me back again.

I return to the UK Tuesday night, 1 November, and then go to Edinburgh University to deliver, as part of its 60th anniversary of nursing studies, the Elsie Stephenson Memorial Lecture on the theme “Towards a public understanding of nursing.”

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

An honor to run with Her Honor

RONALD REAGAN AIRPORT, Arlington, Virginia, USA—Between my previous entry—from Italy—and this one, which follows my visit to Washington, D.C., I had two days in the UK, one day at home and then a day in London at “the mother of parliaments” to attend the launch of Triple Impact, the outcome of the report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health (APPG) on nursing’s contribution to global health. I was invited as one of those who provided evidence to the APPG.

The report was presented by Lord Crisp and others also spoke, including Janet Davies, RN, FRCN, chief executive officer of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Frances Hughes, DNurs, RN, ONZM, chief executive officer of the International Council of Nursing (ICN). I thought it ironic that they were united here given RCN’s decision to quit the ICN several years ago, a move I consider very nearsighted. Following the meeting and before taking the train home, I had a very special treat when I was taken for drinks to The Athenaeum, the most prestigious club in London, by member Anne Marie Rafferty, CBE, PhD, FAAN.

Washington, D.C.

Next day, I returned to London with my wife to stay overnight before flying to New York and then on to Reagan National Airport in Arlington, the nearest airport to Washington, D.C. I avoid Washington Dulles International Airport, which, despite the Washington tag, could be situated (in my humble opinion) a lot closer to Washington.

Loredana Sasso proudly points to her picture on the Wall of Fame
at the American Academy of Nursing conference and induction.

We were in D.C. for the American Academy of Nursing’s (AAN) 2016 Transforming Health, Driving Policy Conference and induction ceremony for new fellows of the academy. Together with Mark Hayter, PhD, RN, FAAN, I sponsored the first Italian to be inducted, Loredana Sasso, MSN, RN, FAAN. We had a thoroughly good time, and I showed my wife the sights of Washington, from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. We took in a few museums, the White House, and the Vietnam War memorial. We also visited Arlington Cemetery, my first time there.

At the AAN conference, I had the most wonderful time running into old friends and making new ones. Old friends included: Frank Shaffer, EdD, RN, FAAN, chief executive officer of CFGNS; Afaf Meleis, PhD, RN, FAAN, former dean of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania; Rita Pickler, PhD, RN, FAAN, nurse scientist at The Ohio State University and one of my fellow Journal of Advanced Nursing editors; Jean Watson, PhD, RN, FAAN, nurse theorist and Distinguished Professor of Nursing from the University of Colorado; Cathy Catrambone, PhD, RN, FAAN, president of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International; and Susan Gennaro, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean and professor at Boston College’s William F. Connell School of Nursing and editor of Journal of Nursing Scholarship.

Three old friends were inducted into the American Academy of Nursing: Dawn Downing, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor of nursing, Columbia University, New York, and long-standing colleague formerly in the UK; Ying Wu, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean of nursing at Peking Capital Medical University, Beijing, China; and Esra Al Khasawneh, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean of nursing at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. One new friend I was delighted to meet was Sean Clarke, PhD, RN, FAAN, associate dean of nursing at Boston College.

The induction ceremony was a triumph, and Mrs. Watson and I sat with a delegation of 14 Italians who were there to support Professor Sasso. The Italians were great company. One of the “upsides” for me was that my wife had a large selection of handsome tuxedoed Italian men with whom to dance while I got on with the serious business of running quality-assurance tests on a bottle of Yeungling beer, made by the oldest brewery in the United States.

At American Academy of Nursing conference,
l-r: Loredana Sasso, Annamarie Bagnasco, Yours Truly,
Giuseppe Aleo, Gianluca Catania, and Milko Zanini.

Running in D.C., but not for office

Naturally, Mrs. Watson and I took our running shoes with us, and we had a very pleasant run around Crystal City. The running triumph was finding a local ParkRun and working out how to get there. ParkRun started in the United Kingdom but has spread across the world. There are three in D.C., and the ambition is to start one in each ward of the city. We chose an amazing event to attend as Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, D.C., joined us on the morning of the run as a way to promote her campaign of fitness in the city. I met Her Honor, shook her hand, and spoke to her. She ran the 5k course with us. I was very pleased to do a time of 22:34, coming in 14th out of 98 runners and first in my age category. Mrs. Watson came in first in her age category, too. I don’t think I can top that for this entry, so I’ll end there.

Next week, from Egypt.

John Adams

As I was finalising this entry and on the verge of submitting it for posting, I received news that a great friend and scholar, John Adams, PhD, RN, formerly of Homerton College, University of Cambridge, had just died. John was a mental health nurse and historian and one of the most entertaining public speakers I have had the privilege to know. In retirement, he had taken to writing obituaries of our departed colleagues, and I joked with him recently—while he was in poor health—that he would live long enough to write mine. Dear John, requiescat in pace.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

This could be Rotterdam ...

GENOA, Italy—The well-known British pop band The Beautiful South played a song titled “Rotterdam,” the chorus of which observes, “This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome …” It felt like that for me these past two weeks because, following Slovenia, I have been in Rotterdam and Genoa. Telling you this also allows me to note that, while many readers of “Hanging smart” will know the song, they may not know that The Beautiful South comes from my home town of Hull and evolved from an equally famous band The Housemartins. So, after that trip down musical memory lane …

Rotterdam

I was in Rotterdam last week for the 5th European Nursing Congress. The theme of these meetings is always care of older people, and the congress, held over four days, provided a series of keynotes and parallel sessions on research and practice related to gerontological nursing. The opening ceremony was attended by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. One of the keynote speakers was my good friend and colleague Li-Chan Lin, PhD, RN, of National Yang Ming University in Taipei, Taiwan. Lin has pioneered the use of the Montessori method and spaced retrieval to help older people with dementia eat. I had the privilege of co-authoring an article reporting the first randomised controlled trial using these methods. Lin also spent six months with me at the University of Sheffield as a Leverhulme Visiting Professor, and her invitation for me to visit her in Taiwan in 2004 led to an unbroken stream of annual visits to Taiwan.

My own contribution to the Rotterdam proceedings was a workshop titled “Four easy steps to publishing your manuscript,” which was well attended. The Journal of Advanced Nursing provided a special issue for the conference abstracts, and it was good to see each of the 1,000 delegates holding a copy of the journal. Six years ago, at the previous congress, the abstracts were published in a special issue of Journal of Clinical Nursing, which I then edited.

Genoa

After one day at home to remind the family of my existence, I went to Genoa, Italy for a week of activities as a visiting professor (docenti) at the University of Genoa. In Rotterdam, I had met Julita Sansoni, PhD, RN, associate professor at Sapienza University of Rome, and illustrating the cliché “It’s a small world,” she was here in Genoa this week, and we had dinner together.

Loredana Sasso

Excitement is growing in the nursing department here because, next week, Loredana Sasso, MSN, MedSc, RN, will be inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in Washington, D.C. Sasso is the first Italian nurse to be inducted, and I am very proud to be her co-sponsor, along with my colleague Mark Hayter, PhD, RN, FAAN, (also a docenti in Genoa). I will be there with Mrs. Watson and a delegation of 14 Italians cheering on this great pioneer of Italian nursing. Pictures and news from the academy meeting will feature in my next entry.

Cheers! In Genoa with (l-r) Milko Zanini, Giuseppe Aleo,
and Mark Hayter.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.