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Global Health Nursing Fellowship to advance the role of nursing worldwide
Nurses provide 90% of health care worldwide today, but Global Health Nursing is still a field in development. There is growing, interdisciplinary recognition of the need to advance and elevate the leadership role of nurses, especially in resource-limited settings. The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Global Health Nursing Fellowship (GHNF) is a year-long program offered to American advanced practice nurses.
Description
The GHNF is designed and implemented in partnership with the international non-profit Partners In Health (PIH), at one rural hospital in Haiti. The program aims to provide experience in global health competencies for U.S.-educated Nursing Fellows, and to develop new educational and professional opportunities for Haitian nurse colleagues. Process evaluation results from the pilot year of the program will inform the design of nurse education initiatives throughout PIH sites.
Lessons Learned
- The “Plan-Do-Study-Act" framework for quality improvement is appropriate for testing novel methods of nursing education in the clinical space in collaboration with Haitian colleagues.
- Flexible expectations for the Nursing Fellows’ clinical learning experience prevents overburdening resources and capacity of host-institutions.
- Rigid systemic constraints on the care delivery team dynamic create barriers to interprofessional collaboration and nurse empowerment.
Implications/recommendations
As the Global Health Nursing field advances, clinical learning experiences abroad should be approached with flexibility and creativity, so that opportunities are not provided at a cost for the already overburdened local health system. Reciprocal program partnerships can prepare nurse leaders with experiences along the spectrum of global health competencies, through projects that impact workforce capacity building, systems change and advocacy.
Learning Areas:
Public health or related nursingLearning Objectives:
Design educational programming that prepares nurse leaders in the United States and abroad, particularly in low-resource settings.
Evaluate global health learning experiences to determine if they are appropriate to global context and mutually beneficial for all stakeholders.
Keyword(s): Nursing Education, International Health
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Sharon Rose, MPH, is Program Manager of the UCSF School of Nursing Center for Global Health, and Monitoring & Evaluation Officer for the UCSF Global Health Nursing Fellowship. She has been working in the School of Nursing on nurse education and community partnerships for 4 years, and she has been working on international public health projects for 10 years.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.