Tuesday, June 10, 2014
McMaster University
Doctor in Sciences honoris causa
Discurso de Orden
Address to Convocation
Dear Chancellor LeBarge,
President Deane, Provost Wilkinson and members of the
Chancellor’s Procession,
Honorable Members of McMaster Faculty and
Graduands of Nursing and Medical Radiation Sciences
To receive the degree of Doctor in Sciences Honoris
Causa from McMaster University is not just an addition to
my curriculum vitae, it is a profound honour for myself,
my country and my family and for the nurses and the
health professionals in the Americas. It is a distinction
that is worthy on it’s own. It is an important tribute to
wisdom, dedication and social commitment. It is also a
statement about the human values of your University.
For a nurse from Latin America always dedicated to
human care and to university life, who believes in the
values of nursing for all societies, and the capacities of
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universities for freedom and transformation, the
acceptance of this degree is a maximun honor that
challenges me and demands of me even more
responsibility and commitment. May you all be assured
that I will honor this distincton while I am alive. I just
want to say thank you.
I come from a country where education has been
honored from the very time of Independence. In
Argentina, primary and secondary education are
obligatory by law, and not sending children to school is
illegal. Every child regardless of his or her social
condition, dreams to go to the university and to be a
doctor or a lawyer or an architect!
I come from a university with more than four
centuries of history founded in 1613. It has 103 research
centers, 25 libraries, 17 museums, 105 graduate
university programs, 194 post graduate programes,
120,000 students and 9,000 faculty profesors; a university
that has produced Presidents and Nobel Prize winner. “It
is a university that has been a cradle of historical
revolutions. In fact, this is the University of the Reform,
the one that initiated in 1918 the transformation of
argentinean and latin american universties through a
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students movement calling for liberty in education,
autonomy, participatory government, free teaching and
research and community extension as university
functions.”*
I want to say that, having done almost all my
education there, the most appreciable values that it has
given me, are the values of humility, respect for the
dignity of every single human being and solidarity. Also it
has given me the value of knowledge and research which
made me regard nursing as a science.
I worked for The Pan American Health Organization
in Washington for more than a decade, I worked with all
the countries of the Americas collaborating with
governments, profesional and educational institutions in
the constant effort to bring more and better nursing and
healthcare to the people, through human resource
development. The highest values that I learned from that
life are the values of health as a human right and that
nursing care is a key contributor to wellness and human
development.
Today I come to McMaster to recieve this honorary
degree from this University that promotes creativity,
innovation and excellence and highlights the value of
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leadership in every student, it is especially dedicated to
the human sciences, with more than 90% of its professors
with doctoral degrees; a University that trains educated
health professionals to contribute both to the Canadian
and global society.
I honor and admire your University because of
that!!!! And because, having learned about the focus of
programs and activities, I have always been aware of the
dedication to train and specialize healthcare professionals
committed to social and health priorities.
Today I have the privilege to see all of you receiving
your degrees and this is for me such an important
moment. My profound respect and congratulations to all
of you, graduands. You have chosen the best professions
in the world! They are professions of love!
As new professionals, specialists, researchers, as
citizens, as public health workers we are sharing a world
where nothing is so permanent as change, a world in a
fascinating transition and a world where communications
and velocity seems to gather us altogether in a common
village.
Health conditions, well-being and daily life have
improved for most of us during the last three decades but
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not for all. Increasing inequities, poverty and marginality
and their social consequences are challenging
governments, thinkers, activists, and full societies: one
quarter of the global population lives with only one dollar
a day and half with two dollars a day. At the same time,
health indicators tell us that most healthy societies are not
necessarily the richest but those with more even
distribution of incomes and goods.
General and extended inequities related to social
determinants of health and health services, have put
health on the top of the global agenda. In 2012 again UN
declared that health is a key component for development
and will be a part of the agenda post-15.
At the same time Ministers of Health have agreed in
the World Health Assembly that Universal Health
Coverage must be the base for organizing health services
in a way of assuring full access to high quality health
care, technologies and medicines, for prevention,
treatment and financial risk protection. Therefore UHC is
the ultimate expression of fairness.
My questions are: how healthcare services such as
medical radiation and nursing are being accessed by
populations? Are we nurses caring for all?. What is the
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014
quality of the services and nursing care that is being
delivered to populations? Are we providing adequate
care? In my opinion, these two simple questions should
orient policy and nursing thinking and decisions to a new
era of re-shaping the definition of nursing, historically
focused on the individual, illness and hospitals.
I am aware that many universities in our Region have
started this interesting discussion and even
transformation, McMaster University School of Nursing
is one of them. The World Health Collaborating Centres,
such as the one in Nursing at McMaster, play an
important part in Health institutions of higher learning
around the world that don’t have the same resources and
capabilities.
We need to bring the social value of nursing care to
the universal health coverage debate and to the center of
the profession debate, if we are to make some significant
change for equity and quality in health. This means that
nursing must be thought of as a social science, that must
highlight its role in social determinants of health, that
should include communities as its main place of nursing
care delivery, that should assure that every person has
access to oportune quality care, and that nursing care
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makes a significant contribution to universal health
coverage.
My recent work has focused on the perspective of the
social sciences. This includes nursing, not only as a
Science and an art, but the philosophy, ethics and politics
of human care while related to health.
Many nurses in this continent are discussing and
organizing activities relating these concepts to the “right
of health”. I invite you all to explore these ideas and
promote the concept in your discussions. We can do
more than expected by strengthening the social concepts
of care.
I appreciate your patience and thank again McMaster
University for its generosity and for this incredible
moment.
*University of Cordoba website
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