Day :
- Pediatric Care and Nursing
Session Introduction
Sharon Elizabeth Metcalfe
Western Carolina University, USA
Title: Collaborative Pediatric International Cultural Learning: Mutual Learning Success
Biography:
Sharon Elizabeth Metcalfe is an Interim Director and Associate Professor at Western Carolina University in Asheville, North Carolina, USA. She has been a Dean of Nursing for a private college and an educational grant Researcher with colleges and hospitals. Currently, she is serving on the Board of the North Carolina Nursing Association Foundation. Her research agenda is on global leadership development and mentoring transformational nurse leaders with pediatric nursing students. She has been serving as the Program Director of the NN-CAT Program (Nursing Network-Careers and Technology), a national program that provides scholarships, stipends, and personal mentors to under-represented ethnic minority students.
Abstract:
Statement of the Problem: The nursing profession is evolving, and expanding to become more international in scope. Jie, Andreatta, Liping, and Sijian (2010) found that immersion for student nurses experiencing an international perspective facilitates their personal and professional growth, and allows them to understand different cultures and global issues. International experiences provide students an awareness of pediatric global nursing issues.
Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: In a systematic review of 23 empirical articles regarding international student exchange experiences, Kolbuk, Mitchell, Glick, and Greiner (2012) found that there were not any articles describing two-way exchange experiences in global pediatric nursing education and there were not any models for best practice for international student clinical immersion exchanges.
Findings: This presentation describes the need for understanding pediatric global nursing through exchange programs and discusses a collaborative partnership between two schools of nursing and a pediatric hospital in the United Kingdom and United Stated of America. This partnership has been in existence for eight years.
Conclusions & Significance: The program prepares students for global awareness of pediatric nursing roles through clinical immersion and self-directed learning experiences. Students are transformed in the clinical mentoring that takes place with guidance of pediatric nurses in both the pediatric hospital in the United Kingdom and the United States. Students are guided and led through pediatric clinical experiences with both ambulatory and critically-ill children and are exposed to international differences and similarities in nursing and medical care. The students learn the various differences in pediatric care within both countries and appreciate the nursing care practices in delivery of care. This program continues to be successful and proves to be an educational foundation in pediatrics.