Announcing Nursing Mutual Aid 2020

As you all know by now, we are all in the midst of a global pandemic. For most of us, daily life as we know it looks a lot different, marked with uncertainty, isolation, and anxiety. This is punctuated by failures of the structural and institutional protections theoretically designed to keep us safe as citizens and as nurses. This means we must look to each other for building new spaces, supporting one another, and imagining a postpandemic future. I (Jess) have had the distinct pleasure of working along side some incredible nurse leaders to develop Nursing Mutual Aid (NMA): Radical Solidarity during COVID-19-related Disruption. What started as a relatively simple – and super privileged – idea of recouping lost conference presentations has developed into something more robust, as you will see. The below text is taken from the now-live NMA website:

Co-created by nurses & midwives to support mutual aid, to foster global connections, & to amplify nursing knowledge from conferences & other events recently canceled by Covid-19.

Nursing Mutual Aid’s MISSION

• To create a virtual platform & community through which nurses and scholars of nursing can share opportunities to participate in mutual aid.
• To curate a Twitter conference where nurses and scholars of nursing present and discuss knowledge from previously-accepted, peer-reviewed posters, presentations, and plenary talks recently canceled due to Covid-related disruptions.
• To amplify nursing scholarship, especially the scholarship of folx who are students or recent graduates, early career, and/or occupy positionalities currently marginalized within nursing and writ large.
• To create a sense of connection and foster solidarity, locally and globally, during a time of social distancing and uncertainty.
• To communicate the value and impact of nursing scholarship to media, multidisciplinary partners, and the public.
• To offer an experience & content that is:
  • Free & Open-Access
  • Accessible
  • Inclusive

These kinds of aims – supporting one another as nurses and as humxns – is always congruent with our Radical Nurse ideas. Join us: share your mutual aid resources. Consider sharing your accepted-but-now-canceled presentation. Participate in the conversations. If you are in a position to help others, do so. Consider conferring clinical, didactic, or simulation credit to your students if they particpiate. Learn more about NMA at the website. Follow along on Twitter @NrsgMutualAid and using the hashtags #NMA2020. We are all in this together and radical solidarity is what will get us through.

In peace and power,

Jess