Indonesian Nursing Curricula Project to Achieve Congruency with 2009 WHO Global Standards for Initial Education of Professional Nurses

Edwards, Joan Elaine

Monday, 18 November 2013: 3:35 PM

Joan Elaine Edwards, PhD
College of Nursing, Texas Woman's University, Houston, TX

Learning Objective 1: Describe a curriculum revision process using the 2009 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Standards for Initial Education of Professional Nurses.

Learning Objective 2: Identify several difficulties encountered with the 2009 WHO document along with recommendations for improvement of the document.

Purpose: In 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) published global standards for initial nursing education intending these standards to be used to ensure globally competent and safe nursing care. This educator recently facilitated a curriculum revision within Indonesia utilizing the WHO document. Project findings have applicability to countries or nursing programs attempting a similar revision. Although the 2009 document is well written, some difficulties were encountered. Specific problems along with improvement recommendations are shared.

Method: Initial curriculum assessments were done for the seven selected nursing programs. Curriculum comparisons were made to individual criteria in the 2009 WHO document Standard 3: Nursing Program Curricula to determine: 1) Existing congruency, 2) lacking essential components, 3) plan of action to achieve congruency, and 4) timeline.

Results: Congruency was found in areas such as theory and practice balance, knowledge and skills taught to meet population needs, active learning/simulation approaches, competency-based learning, paradigm shift to critical thinking, and program evaluations. Criteria only partially or not yet achieved included consideration of workforce planning flows, curriculum relating to professional regulatory requirements of practice ( lack of a Nurse Practice Act in Indonesia), e-learning utilization, evidence-based research usage, multi-disciplinary education approach, and clinical site adequacy. Difficulties encountered with the 2009 WHO document included problems related to document use in a culture with a primary language other than English, difficulty in comprehension of concepts within the document, perceived ambiguity of certain criteria, and the perception of repetition of criteria. Recommendations will be shared to address encountered difficulties with the 2009 WHO document.

Conclusions: The 2009 WHO document is a major step toward global standards achievement in initial nursing education. Refinements in the document to address encountered difficulties will make the document even more valuable.

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