Paper
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

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This presentation is part of : Building Capacity through Learning Networks: The U.S.-Russian Experience
Learning Together to Design Ethics Education for Russian Nurses
Olga Komissarova, RN, MN, Russian Nurses' Association, St Petersburg, Russia, Valentina Sarkisova, RN, BS, Association, All Russian Nurses Association, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Marie J. Driever, RN, PhD, Director of Nursing Quality/Research, Providence Portland Medical Center, Portland, OR, USA.

he Russian Nurses’ Association (RNA) is collaborating with colleagues from a US medical center and university to offer ethics education to Russian nurses.  This paper’s purpose is to describe the education plan developed through this capacity building project.  Discussions with practicing nurses and RNA leadership input led to setting the objectives and plan for an ethics conference.  Of interest to the RNA was an ethical decision-making model from the Providence Center for Health Care Ethics as use of this model promotes application of key ethics principles to clinical situations.  To further application of conference learning, the RNA invited key nurse leaders and asked those leaders to bring two to four of their staff with them to the conference.  The rationale was to have a mall group of nurses who had experienced the conference be able to help each other introduce their conference learning in their home work settings.  Currently, we are doing a post conference follow-up evaluation to understand how well participants are applying what they learned to their day-to-day patient care situations.  To further support awareness and learning about ethical decision-making, the RNA invited the US collaborators to write a column for their quarterly journal.  In jointly developing the plan for this column, the goal is to have two or three columns focus on a case situation to increase awareness of the kinds of ethical concerns Russian nurses encounter and how to use ethics principles to resolve them.  One issue will provide information on an ethics issue that, with RNA input, will be of interest to Russian nurses  Given how new this content was to Russian  nurses, the collaborators were challenged to consider multiple strategies to build an ethics capacity slowly over time.  We have evolved our relationship to learn together about ethics issues in the US and Russia.