The National League for Nursing (NLN) believes that nursing education must include engagement with, not just fleeting exposure to, multiple perspectives on global health issues, including emerging public health concerns and diverse cultural beliefs and practices. Nurses must be prepared to practice nursing competently and responsibly in today's world and in the future.
CALL TO ACTION
Increasing threats of infectious diseases, disasters, poverty, conflicts, and oppression generate migrants, immigrants, and refugees, providing US local communities with many opportunities to care for resettled peoples from around the world. These opportunities require significant changes in health care delivery and the educational preparation of nurses: global becomes local (Lenz & Warner, 2011). Global/local or "glocal" refers to having a global understanding of transnational health issues, social determinants, and solutions while using the perspectives to address health care needs at the local level (Rowthorn, 2015).
Nurses must be prepared for global health care by working with vulnerable populations in their local communities, studying abroad in low-resource communities, and working with internationally educated nurses as they migrate to the United States (Kingma, 2006). Building a global perspective with leveled competencies for all types of nursing programs is essential to this preparation (Jogerst et al., 2015). Many nursing programs may not have adequate re-sources for involvement in international travel but will still have opportunities for "glocal" learning.
Rapidly increasing globalization, with immigrant, migrant, and refugee populations, has implications for nursing education and nursing practice. Linking global and local learning has become increasingly relevant to community engagement. Local clinical possibilities for teaching culturally appropriate community-based care have increased. Nurse educators have escalating opportunities to prepare students for engagement with vulnerable populations who tend to have the poorest health outcomes, such as indigenous peoples, immigrants, refugees, and migrants.
The NLN convened a Strategic Action Group to review its past global initiatives and propose recommendations for strengthening nursing education for global engagement. The following recommendations regarding education, practice, research, and policy are designed to guide increased expansion of nursing education in global engagement.
The full text of this NLN Vision is online:
http://www.nln.org/about/position-statements/nln-living-documents
RECOMMENDATIONS
For Administrative Leadership
* Include a commitment to global engagement in the academic mission.
* Implement policy to actively recruit, hire, and retain faculty, staff, and students from diverse cultural backgrounds, that is, holistic hiring and admission practices.
* Develop faculty awareness about implicit and explicit bias.
* Arrange domestic and international nursing education partnerships to prepare learners for global understanding and participation.
* Allocate time and recognition in the tenure and promotion process for global faculty scholars.
* Work with boards of nursing to accept global service-learning as clinical practice credit.
For Faculty
* Engage in academic-community partnerships that strengthen culturally appropriate practice.
* Form alliances with community organizations that work with vulnerable populations as resources for improving "glocal" health.
* Use population data to generate evidence for curricular change, policy development, and community engagement.
* Embed global health competencies into the curriculum.
* Encourage enrollment in existing interprofessional global health courses.
* Provide interprofessional learning opportunities that prepare students to care for diverse populations in culturally responsive ways.
For the NLN
* Continue to provide faculty development regarding global engagement.
* Recommend integration of global competencies into curricula in undergraduate and graduate education programs.
* Identify a panel of qualified experts to serve as global scholars.
* Create a database of nursing education programs that are exemplars of global engagement.
* Update faculty resources for global experiences.
* Create criteria and seek applications for Centers of Excellence in Global Health Education.
REFERENCES