Advancing Nursing Education Globally Through a Fulbright Teaching Award

Since the Fulbright program was started in 1946 to develop international understanding between the US and the world, the nursing profession has been slow to take advantage of this funding mechanism for research and/or teaching. The Fulbright Scholar program created a directory to search for scholars by their discipline since 2010 (Fulbright, 2018). Between 2010-2018, 57 scholars identified nursing (including medicine-nursing or public health-nursing) as their discipline compared to 217 in medicine and 222 in public health. Since nurses are the largest healthcare profession both in the US and globally, the nursing profession should be taking a leading role in bridging the understanding of global health between the US and the world, and the Fulbright award is an ideal mechanism to accomplish this goal.

Studies published on nursing Fulbright experiences have primarily focused on joint research-teaching awards (Downing, 2016; Nicholas, 2009; Salman, 2018). The aim of this presentation is to encourage nurse educators to apply for the Fulbright teaching award by sharing my experience as a Fulbright teaching scholar in Malawi. I was selected for a Fulbright teaching award for my proposal "Building Nurses' Capacity to Implement Evidence-Based Practice in Malawi". My 5-month Fulbright period will take place from April-August 2019.

After conducing a preliminary literature search on nursing and Fulbright, I found two published guides for nurses preparing to write a Fulbright from Sigma (Nokes, 2016) and National League of Nursing (NLN) (Samawi, 2017). I will tie my application process to the steps outlined in these guides, noting any places where I differed. The second section of my presentation will focus on any discrepancies that appear between my proposed work in Malawi and the work requested of me by my host institution and colleagues. All previous Fulbright scholars emphasized the need to remain flexible due to changing to work requests once in country (Downing, 2016; Nicholas, 2009; Salman, 2018). Bell-Scriber (2016) focused on the specific challenges of collaboration with a nursing Fulbright award. I will share my experience as an educator with a proposed syllabus to teach, who will likely have to adapt that proposal to best meet the needs of Kamuzu School of Nursing in Lilongwe, Malawi.