Abstract
Purpose: Pre-college summer programs expose secondary school students to university life and potential career paths in the U.S., but they have historically under-involved schools of nursing. In particular, global health nursing has received negligible attention in such programs, even though it is a rapidly growing specialty for which the nursing community is actively developing core definitions (Wilson et al., 2016) and texts (Upvall & Leffers, 2014). We took advantage of the Emory University Pre-College Program to reach high-achieving, university-bound students who may not otherwise be exposed to global health nursing when selecting their area of study. We hypothesize that introducing global health nursing at this early stage may contribute positively to the future global health workforce and its advocates.
Methods: We taught a two-week course in the Emory University Pre-College Program, for which students undergo a competitive application process and where they are held to university-level standards. Our course was entitled ‘Global Health Leadership in the 21st Century" and included inter-professional panels, on-site briefings by local organizations, and field trips with hands-on activities. Students were exposed to topics rarely covered in secondary school but of great importance to today"s globalizing society, including maternal and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, vector-borne and parasitic diseases, mental health, comparative health systems, refugee health and human trafficking.
To set the stage, we visited a university library exhibit of historic documents, photographs and film clips related to the history of public health. A research librarian guided students through the displays and fostered discussion of their contents. This provided students a solid foundation in how public health in the U.S. has evolved from a network of naval hospitals into a complex system that must respond to a range of threats from humanitarian emergencies to global pandemics.
Throughout the course, we highlighted various career paths with particular attention to global health nursing. In addition to describing our own professional experiences in Africa and Asia, we drew on the perspectives of guest speakers which included doctorally prepared nurses, a midwife and a physician; epidemiologists, health scientists, a veterinarian and an entomologist with the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention; social workers and advocates with refugee assistance organizations; and a former logistician with Médecins sans Frontières.
We employed experiential and reflective learning approaches with the aim to expand empathy and insight regarding the impact of global health issues on individuals, families and communities. For example, we set up a simulation of refugees" experience of accessing public supplemental nutrition benefits at a grocery store in Clarkston, a nearby town heavily populated by resettled refugees. The students paired up in the store and were assigned hypothetical households with different family compositions, languages spoken, and disposable incomes. They had to record the groceries they would buy for the week with their mock food vouchers and assigned income. We then walked to a local church to debrief about the activity and speak with representatives from the community and local refugee support agencies.
We also visited the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, which contains an exhibit on the global health work of the Carter Center. The students worked through interactive, touch-screen simulations about neglected tropical diseases such as Guinea worm disease, schistosomiasis and blinding trachoma. These simulations required students to identify the clinical presentations of specific diseases, select evidence-based treatments and interventions, and consider the socio-cultural contexts.
Since a major purpose of offering this course was to expand understanding of nursing among secondary school students, we wanted to see whether comparable universities were already engaged in similar activities. To that end, we conducted a web search of American universities with a top-15 graduate nursing program (according to U.S. News & World Report) using the Google search engine. We noted whether the university offers a pre-college program and, if so, whether any of the courses in that program were described as nursing-related courses or were taught by nursing faculty.
Results: Student written evaluations of our course were overall very positive, their post-tests showed measurable gains in knowledge about global health issues compared to their pre-test scores, and their reflective learning essays suggested expanded awareness of health disparities. Importantly, some students expressed enhanced appreciation for the breadth of possibilities in the nursing profession. Based partly on these outcomes, we have been asked to repeat the course next year.
Results from our web search for nursing pre-college courses at similar universities revealed that only one other program among our peer institutions offers instruction in the school of nursing by nursing faculty (University of Michigan, 2016). Moreover, no other program includes a global health nursing course.
Conclusion: Pre-college programs present an under-utilized opportunity to expose high-achieving youth to global health nursing, and to the nursing profession in general. The experience of students in our course suggests that schools of nursing with global health departments could use this type of activity to enhance their visibility. Further courses should be developed for high school populations to encourage enrollment in global health and nursing studies at the university level. Given the paucity of top-ranked nursing schools participating in their university pre-college programs, tapping this potential source of future nurses and allies may help support the quantity and quality of future global health workers.
Notes
This session was accepted for presentation at the International Nursing Research Congress 2017, but not presented.
Sigma Membership
Alpha Epsilon
Lead Author Affiliation
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Type
Poster
Format Type
Text-based Document
Study Design/Type
N/A
Research Approach
N/A
Keywords:
Global Health, Nursing Education, Pre-College
Recommended Citation
Baker, Helen Frances and McGee, Blake Tyler, "Introducing global health nursing to university-bound students: A case study" (2017). INRC (Congress). 89.
https://www.sigmarepository.org/inrc/2017/posters_2017/89
Conference Name
28th International Nursing Research Congress
Conference Host
Sigma Theta Tau International
Conference Location
Dublin, Ireland
Conference Year
2017
Rights Holder
All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.
All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.
All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.
Acquisition
Proxy-submission
Introducing global health nursing to university-bound students: A case study
Dublin, Ireland
Purpose: Pre-college summer programs expose secondary school students to university life and potential career paths in the U.S., but they have historically under-involved schools of nursing. In particular, global health nursing has received negligible attention in such programs, even though it is a rapidly growing specialty for which the nursing community is actively developing core definitions (Wilson et al., 2016) and texts (Upvall & Leffers, 2014). We took advantage of the Emory University Pre-College Program to reach high-achieving, university-bound students who may not otherwise be exposed to global health nursing when selecting their area of study. We hypothesize that introducing global health nursing at this early stage may contribute positively to the future global health workforce and its advocates.
Methods: We taught a two-week course in the Emory University Pre-College Program, for which students undergo a competitive application process and where they are held to university-level standards. Our course was entitled ‘Global Health Leadership in the 21st Century" and included inter-professional panels, on-site briefings by local organizations, and field trips with hands-on activities. Students were exposed to topics rarely covered in secondary school but of great importance to today"s globalizing society, including maternal and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, vector-borne and parasitic diseases, mental health, comparative health systems, refugee health and human trafficking.
To set the stage, we visited a university library exhibit of historic documents, photographs and film clips related to the history of public health. A research librarian guided students through the displays and fostered discussion of their contents. This provided students a solid foundation in how public health in the U.S. has evolved from a network of naval hospitals into a complex system that must respond to a range of threats from humanitarian emergencies to global pandemics.
Throughout the course, we highlighted various career paths with particular attention to global health nursing. In addition to describing our own professional experiences in Africa and Asia, we drew on the perspectives of guest speakers which included doctorally prepared nurses, a midwife and a physician; epidemiologists, health scientists, a veterinarian and an entomologist with the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention; social workers and advocates with refugee assistance organizations; and a former logistician with Médecins sans Frontières.
We employed experiential and reflective learning approaches with the aim to expand empathy and insight regarding the impact of global health issues on individuals, families and communities. For example, we set up a simulation of refugees" experience of accessing public supplemental nutrition benefits at a grocery store in Clarkston, a nearby town heavily populated by resettled refugees. The students paired up in the store and were assigned hypothetical households with different family compositions, languages spoken, and disposable incomes. They had to record the groceries they would buy for the week with their mock food vouchers and assigned income. We then walked to a local church to debrief about the activity and speak with representatives from the community and local refugee support agencies.
We also visited the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, which contains an exhibit on the global health work of the Carter Center. The students worked through interactive, touch-screen simulations about neglected tropical diseases such as Guinea worm disease, schistosomiasis and blinding trachoma. These simulations required students to identify the clinical presentations of specific diseases, select evidence-based treatments and interventions, and consider the socio-cultural contexts.
Since a major purpose of offering this course was to expand understanding of nursing among secondary school students, we wanted to see whether comparable universities were already engaged in similar activities. To that end, we conducted a web search of American universities with a top-15 graduate nursing program (according to U.S. News & World Report) using the Google search engine. We noted whether the university offers a pre-college program and, if so, whether any of the courses in that program were described as nursing-related courses or were taught by nursing faculty.
Results: Student written evaluations of our course were overall very positive, their post-tests showed measurable gains in knowledge about global health issues compared to their pre-test scores, and their reflective learning essays suggested expanded awareness of health disparities. Importantly, some students expressed enhanced appreciation for the breadth of possibilities in the nursing profession. Based partly on these outcomes, we have been asked to repeat the course next year.
Results from our web search for nursing pre-college courses at similar universities revealed that only one other program among our peer institutions offers instruction in the school of nursing by nursing faculty (University of Michigan, 2016). Moreover, no other program includes a global health nursing course.
Conclusion: Pre-college programs present an under-utilized opportunity to expose high-achieving youth to global health nursing, and to the nursing profession in general. The experience of students in our course suggests that schools of nursing with global health departments could use this type of activity to enhance their visibility. Further courses should be developed for high school populations to encourage enrollment in global health and nursing studies at the university level. Given the paucity of top-ranked nursing schools participating in their university pre-college programs, tapping this potential source of future nurses and allies may help support the quantity and quality of future global health workers.