The importance of fostering nurses’ global leadership in dementia care was addressed by Caring Futures Institute researcher Professor Lily Xiao at an international online academic forum recently.

Prof Xiao was invited to present a keynote address to an online forum organised by the West China School of Nursing, Sichuan University in honour of the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday.

The online forum attracted more than 6000 viewers across China, most of them academics, clinicians in various care settings, and PhD and Masters students.

Prof Xiao is a Sichuan University alumni and has teaching and research interests in gerontology nursing, dementia caregiving, nursing workforce development and transcultural nursing.

The theme of the online forum was Nursing the world: promoting nursing development.

In her keynote, Prof Xiao encouraged nurses in China to relate Florence Nightingale’s vision of health and the UN health-related Sustainable Development Goals to dementia care, and to demonstrate leadership to achieve universal health coverage for all Chinese people living with dementia.

She also introduced the vision of the Flinders University Caring Futures Institute, and the importance of knowledge translation and fundamentals of care.

In 2015, dementia affected 47 million people worldwide, with this figure predicted to rise to 132 million by 2050.