Called to Promote Nursing Excellence as Global Educators

An American nurse educator spends a semester as a visiting professor at Wuhan HOPE School of Nursing in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China under the auspices of Project HOPE.  Activities include helping to strengthen the Wuhan baccalaureate and masters’ in nursing programs and creating an environment in the classroom and clinical settings to enhance achievement of desired cognitive, affective and psychomotor outcomes. This American nurse educator in the role of an affiliate faculty teams with a nursing faculty member at a private women’s college in the Midwest United States, who is preparing to teach a nursing education methodologies course at the master’s level. Learning outcomes are developed which allow both educators to integrate diverse teaching strategies while taking advantage of technology and resources that are multidimensional and add richness to the learning experience in both areas of the world.
Prior to leaving for China, the American nurse educator presents an overview of the upcoming semester abroad to the American MSN students.  The Midwest nurse educator, as the course facilitator, explores possible projects which support the MSN course outcomes of distance learning, technology and cultural consideration with the use of problem-based learning.  Upon arrival in Wuhan, the American nurse educator consults with the Chinese nursing faculty to identify course content the American nurse educator will focus on, which includes maternal-newborn concepts.  The American nurse educator presents an introduction from China to the American MSN students using the Skype audio/video conferencing program. The American and Midwest nurse educators then discuss options and propose that three MSN student groups develop materials for use in the American and Chinese classrooms.  Various technologies are explored and tested to insure that the materials can be viewed in the Wuhan classroom. The project includes a video presentation, a PowerPoint on the selected content area and the development of a clinical teaching guide.  Topics are chosen which support the Wuhan concept based curriculum strand of “the expanding family”: newborn assessment, postpartum assessment and assessment of deep vein thrombosis (DVT). The American MSN students begin a literature review which addresses the issues of Chinese environmental health, community resources and social welfare and the role of nursing in Chinese health care settings. The American nurse educator shares this with the Chinese nurse educators and proposes that the Chinese students work as groups on other selected topics.  Chinese nursing faculty believe this is a valuable approach and various topics are chosen.  Faculty in both programs develop learning objectives, identify evaluation criteria, and develop guidelines for the nursing students’ projects. Chinese nursing faculty post this assignment on the Chinese Blackboard nursing course site. 

Using cloud technology, the American MSN students complete their projects and submit them for review.  The American and Midwest nurse educators suggest changes in the projects related to language and terminology as well as the use of culturally sensitive images for the presentations.  After final editing, the projects are shared with Chinese faculty. The American nurse educator integrates the American MSN students’ PowerPoint presentations into the Chinese classroom teaching, and shares the videos and clinical teaching guides with the Chinese nursing students. The Chinese students’ group projects are also presented which included bathing the newborn and umbilical cord care, neonatal jaundice, characteristics of the normal newborn, home care after cesarean birth, prenatal health promotion and education and breastfeeding. Chinese nursing students develop a short PowerPoint presentation on the topic and a clinical teaching guide (in the Han Chinese dialect, with one copy translated into English). The American MSN students review the projects with interest to see how much of the teaching they develop is being incorporated.  A common booklet cover is distributed to the American MSN and Chinese students and the American and Chinese teaching guides are included.  The American and Midwest nurse educators discuss the “take-away” messages learned as a result of implementing the project as well as its application to other global nursing settings.  The American nurse educator describes working with the Chinese faculty to develop test questions based on the content provided by the American MSN students.