About us

The Florence Network is one of Europe’s oldest nursing and midwifery networks established in 1995. The Florence Network compromises 51 Universities (Higher Educational Institutions) from 22 European countries.

The Florence Network is a European Higher Education co-operation of Nursing and Midwifery Departments of European Universities with the aim of identifying and developing educational, scientific, practice and pedagogical commonalities. The Florence Network, while respecting existing variations of ideologies, strategies and visions of Nursing and Midwifery education across Europe, nonetheless, the Florence Network strives to identify commonalities, to enable convergences and to promote mobility between Countries and Institutions as required by European educational treaties.

The objective of the Florence Network is to develop and improve the quality of European higher education in nursing and midwifery by means of international co-operation in the field of education, scientific research and development. In this way the Network aspires to improve the image of the Nursing and Midwifery professions and to improve the quality of European health care.

The main goals of the Florence Network are:

• To raise the profile of European Nursing and Midwifery
• To stimulate and organise the exchange of students between Florence Network members
• To stimulate and organise the exchange of lecturers between Florence Network members
• To contribute to the quality development of curricula in European Nursing & Midwifery Education
• To identify common nursing and midwifery research interests and develop research collaboration
• To develop and organise common projects, and intensive Nursing and Midwifery programmes and/ or activities within ERASMUS+ and other programmes

The Florence Network welcomes Nursing and Midwifery schools from all European countries, is democratically structured and is inclusive of both faculty and students.

Florence Network Permanent Board

President of the Florence Network

Laura Visiers Jiménez Campus San Rafael. Escuela de Enfermería y Fisioterapia San Juan de Dios. Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, Madrid, Spain University Center Spain lvisiers@comillas.edu

Vice –president of the Florence Network

Mirjam Palsma Hanze University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands m.palsma@pl.hanze.nl

Academic Committee of the Florence Network

Maria Malliarou University of Thessaly, Greece malliarou@uth.gr

Renzo Moreale Udine University, Italy   Renzo.moreale@uniud.it

Ronald Ars NHL/Stenden, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands ronald.ars@nhlstenden.com

Visibility Group of the Florence Network

Sara Rodriguez Martin Edinburgh Napier University Scotland s.rodriguezmartin@napier.ac.uk

Claudia Bacatum, Nursing School of Lisbon, Portugal claudia.bacatum@esel.pt

Hege Skytte, University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), Norway  hege.n.skytte@usn.no

Research Group of the Florence Network

Mirza Oruč University of Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina Department of medicine and nursing mirza.oruc@unze.ba

Federica Canzan University of Verona, Italy Department of nursing federica.canzan@univr.it

Inge Tency Odisee, Belgium Department of midwifery inge.tency@odisee.be

Student Board

The Student Board (SB) is composed of five elected members, hereunder a President and Vice-President and three additional board members. SB members are elected by the students present at the SB Annual Meeting and there is one student vote per institution. Our aim is to promote the visibility of the network among the students, encourage students’ exchanges between the institutions and facilitate the discussion about nursing and midwifery educational and professional issues across Europe.

Furthermore, the Student Board has an important responsibility to prepare and organize the student programme for the Florence Network Annual Meeting (FNAM).

Student Board of the Florence Network