Princess Srinagarindra Award Foundation
Professor Dr. Nurith WAGNER and Professor Dr. Miriam HIRSCHFELD, Laureate 2022
Professor Dr. Nurith WAGNER and Professor Dr. Miriam HIRSCHFELD, Laureate 2022
Biography :
Professor Dr. Nurith WAGNER, age 81 years old, an Israeli and Professor Dr. Miriam HIRSCHFELD, age 80 years old, born in New Zealand, raised in Vienna, Austria and immigrated to Israel. Both of them have been working for now fifty years of collaboration in advancing nursing ethics, cross cultural nursing, and human rights in Israel and internationally.
Dr. WAGNER, as a graduate student in the seventies developed an “Ethical Decision-Making Game” aimed at teaching and helping nurses find answers in difficult situations of moral dilemmas. After piloting and cultural validation, the game was then published by the Nursing Division of Ministry of Public Health. It is since used in all Israeli Schools of Nursing in teaching ethical decision making. She is considered the number one Israeli nurse expert in bioethics and has thus voiced nursing concerns in several national committees, influencing policy. For example, her input to the multidisciplinary committee on “the Law of the Dying Patient” was crucial. Since its inception, she is a member of the National Bioethics Committee, where she is a strong advocate for patient and human rights.
Dr. WAGNER founded the Ethics Bureau of the Israel Nurses Association and is now the President. This Bureau has a strong track record of public health, human rights and ethics advocacy dealing with issues as, for instance: ethical guidelines for nursing research; ethical approaches to dealing with disabled health workers; respecting the rights of informal caregivers/families in the formal health system; and human rights issues proper, as trying to change [Ministry of Interior (Security) and Ministry of Health] regulations, that injured or sick prisoners need to be physically restrained, when hospitalized. She is presently contacting major Israeli hospitals to document, monitor and, hopefully, end prisoner-patients' restraining.
As part of the Bureau's activity, Dr. WAGNER developed the Israeli nursing ethics code, which has been distributed to all Israeli nurses, and which is discussed in workshops and meetings around the country. As the Hadassah Medical Centers Director of Nursing at that time, she initiated and held two courses for trauma preparedness for Palestinian ambulance teams and physicians as part of an effort to not only improve services, but also build a bridge to peace. During her tenure she made countless interventions on behalf of Palestinian patients and their families receiving care in the hospital. She also worked with her staff to promote respectful and considerate treatment of Palestinians, even if they had been involved in the many terror attacks in Jerusalem. Dr. WAGNER received the Human Rights and Nursing Award from The International Centre for Nursing Ethics, University of Surrey, UK.
Dr. HIRSCHFELD, a leading nurse educator and expert in long-term care served as WHO's Chief Nursing. Just one of her ethics-related interventions were messages to all WHO Member states' Nursing & Midwifery Divisions to actively work against "Female genital mutilation." While in Israel she was a member of the multidisciplinary committee, preparing the national Long-term care (LTC-Nursing) law, giving crucial nursing input. She educated community-based LTC teams for the entire country, as the nurse responsible for Geriatrics and LTC in the Clalit Sick fund, which was at the time responsible for some 80% of Israel’s population; this in parallel to teaching a generation of nurses at Tel-Aviv University.
In WHO, as then Director of the Cluster of "Home-based and Long-term care" she advanced multi-disciplinary ethical thinking related to long-term care, summarized in a publication “Ethical Choices in Long-term care: What does Justice require?" and global knowledge on the need of LTC in meetings and publications on Key LTC issues and Developing country case studies. She had developed international nursing research and a network of then 36 Collaborating Centers in the six WHO regions in close collaboration with the Regional Nurse advisors and ICN, as well as a Nursing Resolution 45.5. and two major policy documents, which were endorsed by the World Health Assembly (191 Member States). Some of the special acknowledgements she received were two honorary doctorates, one in the U.K (Medicine), and one in the USA (Science) and the highest contribution to Austria Medal by the President of the Austrian Republic and a gold medal of the Austrian Nurses Association.
After retiring from WHO she established an Academic Nursing Department in Israel’s periphery, education and researching inter-ethnic (Jewish -Arab- Ethiopian descent) student and faculty collaboration and respect. In Melbourne, at the 2013 25th ICN Congress, she welcomed in the name of the Israeli Nurses Association, the Palestinian Nurses Association, as a new ICN member. Before already, and since then, she is closely collaborating with the Palestinian Nurses Association, WHO and the Middle East Nurses on joint educational activities, as e.g., preparation toward Ph.D. studies, nurse referrals and infection control.
In 2018 Dr. HIRSCHFELD was elected as the first nurse on the Board of the Physicians for Human Rights, Israel, where she is the nursing voice in relation to the manifold human rights issues related to access to quality universal health care for all, non-legal residents, refugees, prisoners and other disadvantaged populations.
In recognition of Dr. WAGNER’s and Dr. HIRSCHFELD’s excellent work the Board of Trustees of the Princess Srinagarindra Award Foundation under the Royal Patronage unanimously resolved to let Professor Dr. Nurith WAGNER and Professor Dr. Miriam HIRSCHFELD be the recipients of the Princess Srinagarindra Award for the year 2022.
Address/ Work
Country Israel
Professor Dr. Nurith WAGNER and Professor Dr. Miriam HIRSCHFELD, Laureate 2022
Biography :
Professor Dr. Nurith WAGNER, age 81 years old, an Israeli and Professor Dr. Miriam HIRSCHFELD, age 80 years old, born in New Zealand, raised in Vienna, Austria and immigrated to Israel. Both of them have been working for now fifty years of collaboration in advancing nursing ethics, cross cultural nursing, and human rights in Israel and internationally.
Dr. WAGNER, as a graduate student in the seventies developed an “Ethical Decision-Making Game” aimed at teaching and helping nurses find answers in difficult situations of moral dilemmas. After piloting and cultural validation, the game was then published by the Nursing Division of Ministry of Public Health. It is since used in all Israeli Schools of Nursing in teaching ethical decision making. She is considered the number one Israeli nurse expert in bioethics and has thus voiced nursing concerns in several national committees, influencing policy. For example, her input to the multidisciplinary committee on “the Law of the Dying Patient” was crucial. Since its inception, she is a member of the National Bioethics Committee, where she is a strong advocate for patient and human rights.
Dr. WAGNER founded the Ethics Bureau of the Israel Nurses Association and is now the President. This Bureau has a strong track record of public health, human rights and ethics advocacy dealing with issues as, for instance: ethical guidelines for nursing research; ethical approaches to dealing with disabled health workers; respecting the rights of informal caregivers/families in the formal health system; and human rights issues proper, as trying to change [Ministry of Interior (Security) and Ministry of Health] regulations, that injured or sick prisoners need to be physically restrained, when hospitalized. She is presently contacting major Israeli hospitals to document, monitor and, hopefully, end prisoner-patients' restraining.
As part of the Bureau's activity, Dr. WAGNER developed the Israeli nursing ethics code, which has been distributed to all Israeli nurses, and which is discussed in workshops and meetings around the country. As the Hadassah Medical Centers Director of Nursing at that time, she initiated and held two courses for trauma preparedness for Palestinian ambulance teams and physicians as part of an effort to not only improve services, but also build a bridge to peace. During her tenure she made countless interventions on behalf of Palestinian patients and their families receiving care in the hospital. She also worked with her staff to promote respectful and considerate treatment of Palestinians, even if they had been involved in the many terror attacks in Jerusalem. Dr. WAGNER received the Human Rights and Nursing Award from The International Centre for Nursing Ethics, University of Surrey, UK.
Dr. HIRSCHFELD, a leading nurse educator and expert in long-term care served as WHO's Chief Nursing. Just one of her ethics-related interventions were messages to all WHO Member states' Nursing & Midwifery Divisions to actively work against "Female genital mutilation." While in Israel she was a member of the multidisciplinary committee, preparing the national Long-term care (LTC-Nursing) law, giving crucial nursing input. She educated community-based LTC teams for the entire country, as the nurse responsible for Geriatrics and LTC in the Clalit Sick fund, which was at the time responsible for some 80% of Israel’s population; this in parallel to teaching a generation of nurses at Tel-Aviv University.
In WHO, as then Director of the Cluster of "Home-based and Long-term care" she advanced multi-disciplinary ethical thinking related to long-term care, summarized in a publication “Ethical Choices in Long-term care: What does Justice require?" and global knowledge on the need of LTC in meetings and publications on Key LTC issues and Developing country case studies. She had developed international nursing research and a network of then 36 Collaborating Centers in the six WHO regions in close collaboration with the Regional Nurse advisors and ICN, as well as a Nursing Resolution 45.5. and two major policy documents, which were endorsed by the World Health Assembly (191 Member States). Some of the special acknowledgements she received were two honorary doctorates, one in the U.K (Medicine), and one in the USA (Science) and the highest contribution to Austria Medal by the President of the Austrian Republic and a gold medal of the Austrian Nurses Association.
After retiring from WHO she established an Academic Nursing Department in Israel’s periphery, education and researching inter-ethnic (Jewish -Arab- Ethiopian descent) student and faculty collaboration and respect. In Melbourne, at the 2013 25th ICN Congress, she welcomed in the name of the Israeli Nurses Association, the Palestinian Nurses Association, as a new ICN member. Before already, and since then, she is closely collaborating with the Palestinian Nurses Association, WHO and the Middle East Nurses on joint educational activities, as e.g., preparation toward Ph.D. studies, nurse referrals and infection control.
In 2018 Dr. HIRSCHFELD was elected as the first nurse on the Board of the Physicians for Human Rights, Israel, where she is the nursing voice in relation to the manifold human rights issues related to access to quality universal health care for all, non-legal residents, refugees, prisoners and other disadvantaged populations.
In recognition of Dr. WAGNER’s and Dr. HIRSCHFELD’s excellent work the Board of Trustees of the Princess Srinagarindra Award Foundation under the Royal Patronage unanimously resolved to let Professor Dr. Nurith WAGNER and Professor Dr. Miriam HIRSCHFELD be the recipients of the Princess Srinagarindra Award for the year 2022.
Address/ Work
Country Israel
