Globalization and nursing partnerships

Enhancing nursing knowledge through democratic cross-national collaboration

Enhancing nursing knowledge requires the exchange of ideas worldwide through the collaboration of nurse scientists. Healthy partnerships abide by the values of collaboration, mutual trust, respect and dignity. However, a lack of information exists regarding the nature of cross-national academic partnerships in nursing. The purpose of this article is twofold: to explore democratic cross-national collaborations in nursing and to pose theoretically-based interventions to enhance future democratic collaborations cross-nationally in nursing. While a review of the literature revealed some model nursing partnerships, nursing can benefit from having a better evidence based understanding of the topic. Theoretical formulations from education, philosophy and critical anthropology offer complementary lenses to aid in the analysis. The process can help nursing academics to think more critically about the issues and to delineate theory driven protocols for democratic cross-national collaboration with the ultimate aim of enhancing nursing knowledge.

Language plus for international graduate students in nursing

PURPOSE

To provide information about an English-language support program that focuses on the needs of international graduate nursing students. The growing presence of these students coincides with the increasing numbers of universities committed to world health. Crucial social and language competence affect the success and progress of international students in graduate nursing programs.

DESIGN

Reviewed literature was 1980 to 1998, in nursing and applied linguistic research including second-language acquisition, phonology, discourse analysis, and language pragmatics to identify social and language phenomena.

FINDINGS

Investigators suggest essential elements such as conventions of academic writing, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and pronunciation skills be included in the supportive Language Plus program.

CONCLUSIONS

Ongoing development of the Language Plus program can promote collaboration between nurses and linguists and increase the success of international graduate nursing students.

Global Consciousness in Nursing: An Ethnographic Study of Nurses with an International Perspective

Despite an ideal of international awareness, nursing education and professional organization have traditionally fostered social analysis within a rather local sphere of influence. However, there have always been renegade nurses whose idealism and global perspective have made them challenge the profession, adopt unusual career paths, or even leave nursing in favor of roles that more readily adapt to global awareness. Because the health care of the future demands an increasingly global-policy perspective, it is important to explore the relationship between the social structure of professional nursing and its ideological imperatives. This research employed ethnographic methods to study the experience of nurses involved in balancing what they perceived to be the discrepant perspectives of nursing and global awareness. The findings depict remarkable and inspiring careers within nursing and document the difficulties encountered by nurses in their attempts to apply global awareness to their professional nursing lives. Further, they generate practical implications for nursing education and professional organization to respond to the global trend toward primary health care policy and to prepare nurses to meet the inevitable challenges of the next millennium.

Becoming gold-plated: Chinese nurses studying abroad

The purpose of this interpretive study is to describe the experience of Chinese nurses studying abroad. Twenty-three nurses living in Taiwan, who had studied in the United States for university degrees, were interviewed in 1990. A central process was "Becoming gold-plated." The first major theme was "Enormous pressure and sacrifice," with the subthemes of "Self-doubt," "Language difficulties," "Isolation and loneliness," and "Separation and guilt." The second major theme was "Transformed self," with subthemes of "High aspiration" and "New perspective on life." In spite of the hardships of study abroad, Chinese nurses felt pride in their accomplishment and self-respect for the knowledge and sophistication they gained.