Keynote Speakers

Sigrún Gunnarsdóttir is a Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Iceland with a focus on leadership, employee well-being, health-promoting work environment, and organizational culture. Sigrún is a nurse with a PhD in public health, leadership, and employee well-being.

Title of Keynote Lecture:

The balance of courage and care in successful nurse leadership.

Sigrún has held management positions at a Primary Health Care Center, the Office of the Medical Director of Health, the Ministry of Health, and Landspitali Hospital. For several years, she served as an external consultant for Human Resources for Health in Europe, World Health Organization in Copenhagen. Sigrún has been with the University of Iceland since 2007, participating in research projects on effective and health-promoting leadership and health-promoting work environments and culture, and leading research projects on servant leadership. Sigrún served as a deputy member of Parliament (2013-2018) and as political advisor to the Minister of Health in 2018. She represents Iceland on the board of NIVA under the Nordic Council of Ministers and leads a center for servant leadership.

Toni Haapa is an operating room (OR) nurse. Currently, he serves as a Research Nursing Officer at Helsinki University Hospital in Finland and a part-time Associate Professor at Lovisenberg Diaconal University College in Norway. Additionally, he is a docent (adjunct professor) at Tampere University (Finland). His research interests focus on the quality of clinical learning environments. Toni possesses extensive research methodological experience, with particular expertise in theory development, including instrument development and literature reviews. His teaching experience spans both undergraduate and postgraduate nursing students, as well as the continuing education of nursing staff. He is a former president of the Finnish Operating Room Nurses Association (FORNA). In his keynote lecture, he defines the attributes of clinical learning environments and describes how their quality should be ensured to promote the expertise of both student nurses and newly hired nurses.

Title of Keynote Lecture:

Ensuring the quality of clinical learning environments to promote the expertise of nurses

Specialist, Department of Anaesthesiology and Surgery, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark. Since 2006, I have been working in the perioperative field, primarily as an operating room nurse specializing in cardiothoracic and vascular surgery. Operating room nursing is a field I am deeply passionate about. Over the past three years, I have been engaged in a PhD project examining the consequences of surgery cancellation.

Title of Keynote Lecture:

Day-of-Surgery Cancellations: Challenges and Consequences

Cancellation of planned surgery remains a significant and ongoing challenge for healthcare systems, with negative impacts on patients, healthcare professionals, and hospital costs. Approximately 300 million major surgical procedures are performed worldwide each year, and the prevalence of same-day cancellations reaches up to 18% across all specialties.

When cancellation occur on the intended day of surgery, it involves multiple healthcare professionals—including the operating room team, surgeon, anaesthesiologist, post-anaesthesia care unit nurse, and schedulers—and result in wasted resources related to preoperative preparations. Surgery cancellations due to hospital-related causes have been associated with significantly more negative emotional reactions among patients compared to cancellations for other reasons.

In this session, I look forward to presenting results from my PhD project on patient-reported harm following cancellation of planned surgery. Is cancellation just an accepted inevitability, or can we, as healthcare professionals, learn from patients' experiences of this unintended event? Moreover, is it possible to intervene in order to mitigate patient harm?

Chief of nursing, Norwegian Nurses Organisation (from June 1st 2025)
Professor of nursing at Lovisenberg Diaconal University College

Title of Keynote Lecture:

How did we get here and what now? Using, not abusing the safety-critical nursing competence in task-oriented healthcare systems

Throughout my career, both in clinical practice and academia, my primary objectives have been to enhance the quality of nursing care and ensure patient safety as well as to ensure quality in nursing research and education. My main research areas are nurses’ scope of practice, that is, role, function and decision-making; nursing/healthcare informatics and technology, and; nursing didactics. During the past two years, I have worked extensively on outreach to nurses, specialised nurses, leaders, union representatives, and collaborating health personnel on the topics of accountability, responsibility, and task sharing. My main message is that the task orientation in healthcare contrasts the complexity and holistic responsibilities inherent in the nursing profession. From June 1st, 2025, I will assume the position as Chief of Nursing in the Norwegian Nurses Organisation.

Anna Nordström is an operation (OR) nurse who has worked in the operating room since 2004. With a deep passion for surgical care and professional development, she has been a board member of the Swedish Operating Room Nurses Association (SEORNA) since 2021. In that role, she led the national project Sustainable Perioperative Care, which she will share insights from in her keynote lecture.

Title of Keynote Lecture:

Project: Sustainable Perioperative Care

SEORNA is a professional organization dedicated to advancing the field of perioperative nursing. We fulfill this mission by contributing our collective expertise to promote safe and sustainable surgical care—most recently through the launch of the following initiative.

The aim of the project is to help secure the future of surgical care by addressing the societal challenges currently facing healthcare in general, and perioperative care in particular. It also seeks to map the current state of perioperative care and identify strategies to enhance both patient safety and sustainability.

In response to ongoing discussions—intensified in 2023—among healthcare employers regarding the need for “new competencies” in healthcare broadly, and in perioperative care specifically, the SEORNA board initiated a project focused on the future of surgical care.

In this session, I look forward to presenting the findings of SEORNA’s project Sustainable Perioperative Care.

Patrick E. Voight, MSA, BSN, RN, CNOR, FIFPN is a Managing Director with a leading global consulting firm and serves as the U.S. leader for Perioperative and Interventional Services Consulting. A registered nurse with over 30 years of clinical and executive experience, Patrick has established himself as a transformative force in healthcare consulting, partnering with organizations across the United States, Canada, and Australia to drive operational excellence, cost efficiency, and quality outcomes in complex surgical and interventional environments.

Throughout his distinguished career, Patrick has advised more than 500 hospitals, including top-tier academic medical centers, private and public health systems, military healthcare institutions, and the Veterans Administration. His expertise has been instrumental in redesigning and optimizing surgical services, with a particular focus on patient safety, workforce alignment, and strategic performance improvement. Notably, he has led the transformation of perioperative programs at five of the top ten academic medical centers in the U.S., setting new benchmarks in surgical care delivery.

During his role in Consulting, Patrick also served as Chief of Staff to the former Secretary of Health and Human Services at the Center for Health Solutions in Washington, D.C., where he played a critical role in advancing healthcare quality and reform initiatives at the national level.

Patrick is globally recognized for his contributions to perioperative nursing and healthcare leadership. He is a past national President of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) and has been a key voice on the international stage through his long-standing service to the International Federation of Perioperative Nurses (IFPN), where he served on the board since 2009 and most recently as President (2022 – 2024).

With a legacy defined by visionary leadership, cross-sector impact, and an unwavering commitment to advancing perioperative practice, Patrick remains a respected authority and advocate for excellence in surgical and interventional healthcare worldwide.