Co-Development and Strengthening of a New Curriculum, Global Collaboration Between a Low- and High-Resource Countries

Background: There is an increasing global connection, diversity, and interconnectedness of health problems that make it important to encourage partnerships between nursing institutions globally to promote positive educational and health outcomes. To ensure quality nursing education, patient care, and delivery of culturally sensitive care, nurses need to be educated and exposed to global nursing care, education and research. Global perspective and experience during undergraduate nursing education provides valuable opportunities to equip future nurses with relevant knowledge and skills to address increasingly complex health care systems, policy issues and leadership development at both global and domestic level. To respond to these increasing demands within the context of diverse and complex health care conditions and systems, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee in their report on the future of nursing suggests that nurses be educated in new ways that better prepare them to meet the needs of the population.

Objective: The goal of this project was to collaborate with a new nursing curriculum in a low resource country to strengthen the newly designed nursing curriculum and develop research capacity on women's health empowerment into nursing education and clinical practice.

Methods: In 2017, a faith-based baccalaureate nursing program in the United States with strong community-based focus collaborated with a new nursing program in a low-resource country, Nigeria. The institution aspires to produce graduates that will have good critical thinking and creativity and gain relevant knowledge and skills, and identify best practices for health care, inform health policy and contribute to improved educational and health outcomes. Another goal of the nursing program is to produce polyvalent nurses who will be competent in utilizing ongoing technological changes in the provision of nursing care. Partnerships involved in-person visit and delivery of series of trainings to faculty members and administrators, and role-modelling by teaching some of the nursing fundamental classes at the host institution with faith integration into the courses taught. To promote cultural sensitivity, an African born scholar/nurse scientist and an expert in nursing education and women’s health research was sent from the high-resource country to work with the nursing institution in the low resource country. Some of the activities completed during the initial one month visit by the scholar who worked with the African institution included reviewing and revising the clinical aspect of the curriculum to incorporate best practices from the high resource institution. Other activities included educating the academic and clinical staff on the use of mixed methods and appropriate statistical analysis in research, strengthening the faith component of the program and proposing projects that would be relevant, effective and sustained in the institution’s context. There is an ongoing partnership which encompass resource sharing between the two institutions including faculty members and student exchange programs.

Conclusions: International collaboration between a low-resource and high-resource nursing educational institutions provides a great opportunity for nurses from both institutions to be exposed to various health systems, health models and challenges. This global collaboration will also provide the future nurses with the opportunities to learn, collaborate, and build capacity to deliver high-quality patient care and improve health outcomes at both domestic and global level.