Transforming Nurse-Physician Relationships in Eurasia: A Model of Sustainability

Skilled nursing professionals are a vital link to patient care and an essential component of any health system. In many developing and transitioning countries, however, nurses face a number of professional barriers. Some of these include a lack of professional standards and guidelines, absence of an independent nursing care structure based on critical thinking, systemic inability to engage in clinical or administrative decision-making processes, a dearth of training and educational opportunities at all levels, and inability to forge partnerships with their physician colleagues to enhance patient care.  Transformation of physician nurse partnerships can be achieved in a variety of ways.   The American International Healthcare Alliance (AIHA) provided support for building a model of nurse physician partnership.   Funding from AIHA supported interdisciplinary   teams from hospitals and academic medical centers in the US and the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe countries to work collaboratively on improving patient care across the continuum.   This decade of funding provided an environment of continuous learning and improvement with sustainability of excellence and leading practices as the goal.   Each year the participants would meet either in the US or in another agreed upon site to share their results and share strategies for improvement.   The presenter will share a sustainable model creating a cadre of leaders for this generation and beyond.  As partners in care, nurses and physicians are creating change.