The eighth European Regional Conference of NCFI was held 31 May – 5 June at the Rehoboth Centre, Valea Draganului, Cluj County, Romania. The conference centre is beautifully situated in the Western Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, the north-western most province of Romania, towards the Hungarian border.
The conference was the culmination of at least twelve years of networking and building contacts, and prayer. Rodica Morar (a retired paediatric nurse, and founder of the Fundatia Creştinâ de Ajutorare, Cluj, [the Christian Aid Foundation of Cluj]) and Claudia Persa (a rehabilitation nurse in Cluj and volunteer at the Foundation) have attended several European and International Conferences of NCFI, with the support and encouragement of NCFI Trustee and former International Board member, Pat Ashworth. Their vision has been to see the establishment of a Christian nursing fellowship in Romania, and they have worked long and hard at building both national and international contacts.
Over eighty people attended for some or all of the conference, including 43 international nursing delegates and 36 Romanian nurses (including, for the final day, the Dean of the Baptist Nursing School in Cluj) – this was in large part due to a generous donation to the European Regional Scholarship Fund by the Finnish NCF, SSKS.
The Bible addresses were given from the book of Daniel by Pastor Beniamin Faragau, an internationally known Bible teacher and pastor of the Iris Baptist Church in Cluj – his personal experiences of ill health in the last two years gave a powerful insight into the challenge of caring in the name of Jesus, and his expositions explored the themes of living with change, difference, uncertainty and opportunity. The plenary sessions were led by Uta Bornschein (Germany), Sue Allen (England) with Dana Chantree (Romania) and Ioana Tomoletu (Romania & Spain), Barbara Parfitt (Scotland) and Kamalini Kumar (USA) on respectively on the themes of nursing in times of change, nursing with uncertainty, nursing with difference and embracing new opportunities in nursing.
There were several national and international papers and seminars presented on themes as managing burnout, praying with patients, teaching a whole person and biblically based model of care and Parish Nursing, etc, etc. The feedback on all the plenary and concurrent sessions was very positive, and the standard of presentations was uniformly high.
However, as with all conferences it is the meetings outside the official programme that often bear the most fruit. One major development was that through several meetings, the Romania nurses (who came from seven different cities or provinces across the country) agreed to establish a national Christian nursing fellowship, appointed a leader and established a preliminary programme for meetings and email networking. KFSS also provided some initial funding to help establish the group, and there will be ample opportunities for the European Committee to meet with the new leadership and support their work in the coming year.
Secondly, a very positive link was built between NCFI and PRIME through the training programme in Armenia undertaken by Barbara Parfitt and two Scottish nurses in May, and by the presence of PRIME director Dr John Geater at the conference. We were able to explore possible future projects and programmes of joint training between PRIME and NCFI, and will be following this up with a conference in Glasgow, Scotland in mid-June.
Finally, we were also able to sponsor a couple of nurses from Albania and two from Armenia, as well as three from Moldova, strengthening and establishing new links with all three nations. We have a good link into the Moldovan Association of Christian Nurses through Anna Suvac, and a new link into the nursing division of the Armenian Christian Medical Association through the joint NCFI/PRIME training programme piloted by NCF Scotland in May. We also hope, through ICMDA and PRIME links in Albania to support the development of an Albanian Christian nursing network.
Overall the conference achieved its underlying aim of strengthening, establishing and renewing links with Christian nursing groups in Eastern Europe – and the challenge before the new European Committee is to see these links and contacts taken forward.
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