Lessons from Global Nursing Activities of Korean Nursing Students in a Rural Community of Ethiopia

Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Hyeonkyeong Lee, PhD, RN
Dept. of Nursing Environments and Systems, Yonsei University College of Nursing, Seoul, South Korea
Tae Wha Lee, PhD, RN
College of Nursing, Nursing Environments and Systems, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
Myeongseon Kim, RN, BS
Nursing School, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to describe students’ learning outcomes from global nursing internship program.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to discuss facilitators and barriers to global nursing activities for nursing students.

Purpose: Responding to the increased need of global health capacity building for nursing students, a global nursing internship (GNI) program was conducted for Korean nursing students to enhance global health understanding and build students’ capacity to apply their nursing knowledge and skills to global health settings, focusing on primary health care. This study evaluated a 2-week GNI program conducted in Ethiopia in July 2011.

Methods: A total of 18 nursing students from 3 universities participated in the GNI program.  The program consisted of community assessment, health education, community campaign, primary health outreach service, site visits to global health organizations and cultural exchanges. A self-administered questionnaire examined student competence in 23 activities using a 4-point Likert scale and program satisfaction perceived by participants using a 5-point Likert scale after completing the GNI program. In addition, reflective evaluation using 5 questions was conducted during daily group evaluation sessions. The discussion was written in daily evaluation reports followed by content analysis.

Results: Mean student competence score was 3.2 and the participants showed the highest competence in the areas of both community health education and new life value as a global citizen. Overall mean program satisfaction score was 4.0. Almost all participants strongly recommended this program to others. The most interesting things addressed by the participants were higher community people’s attention to their health education than expected, observation of culturally different community environment and communication with people in Ethiopia. The most confused things were a different calendar system, different nursing skills, and best ways of assistance to help community. 

Conclusion: The GNI program contributed to increase students’ intercultural competence and provided a chance to prepare their careers in global health nursing. It is suggested to plan more preparatory sessions before the GNI program and integrate the program into nursing curriculum.