Sustainable practice and the learning environment

Sustainable practice and the learning environment

For this post I am going to raise two issues that I think that directly relate to sustainability in nursing education; the nature of health care systems being global and collaborative learning as an approach to save trees (which follows on from my post on technologies in teaching and learning). Both are closely related.

Keeping global health at the centre of this blog, sustainability has been defined by the World Health Organization (2002) as “the ability of a project to continue to function effectively, for the foreseeable future with high treatment coverage, integrated into available health care services, with strong community ownership, using resources supplied by the community and government” (cited by Leffers & Mitchell, 2011). In this sense, sustainability does not necessarily refer to saving trees, but to sustaining programs that are put in place. Often this becomes a political issue with many sustainable programs that impact on the health of communities becomes a political football, for an example in my nursing practice as a public health nurse, I see a more liberal government introduces health programmes that promote good health for children like ‘fruit in school’ while a more centre-right party may feel that health is a responsibility of the individual. My question is, ‘is this the case in education too?’ I suspect it is so. In Casey and Wilson (2005) article, the following questions should be asked about education programmes in order for them to be sustainable:

•        Can the module be run repeatedly?

•        Continuity of courses and curricula.

•        The real costs of operation. Mainstream course costs are often far from transparent or even discoverable; they are buried deep in general institutional costs. Flexible courses tend to be ‘bolted on’ and may be more visible, and hence are an easy target for cuts.

•        Teacher workloads  and capacity

•        Can the module be taught without the original author?

•        The storage of materials and supporting notes

•        Course evaluation.

Leffers and Mitchell (2011) claim that sustainable programs need to have “tools [that] are on-going assessments across organizational levels, strong infrastructure development for capacity building, collaboration among stakeholders, key leadership, expertise, program champions, opportunities for transition of leadership, appropriate resources, fit between the partnering stakeholders, adaptability, and ongoing education” (p 92-93). All these are applicable to OP and the School of Nursing.

The concept of global health was raised in a current article by Kulbok, Mitchell and colleagues (2012). One of the issues that these authors discuss, is that globalization of health has an impact on the sharing of information, policies, practices and outcomes, and that the sharing of this information needs to happen in the higher education institutions as much as in clinical practice, because one informs the other. They make this claim because they see that with globalization, the majority of nurses are going to work and practice either in another culture or with patients/clients/consumers from another culture, and with that in mind nursing students need to have a good understanding of the culture of their clients. An example is that this year there are 3 elective nursing students doing their “transition to RN” paper in Africa, and I wonder how well we have prepared them for this. Admittedly not all students will work in Africa, but it isn’t a huge leap to think that a large proportion of our students will work either with an African colleague or will nurse someone from the African continent, either in NZ or elsewhere.

 

References:

Casey, J. & Wilson, P. (2005). A practical guide to providing flexible learning in further and higher        education. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)

Kulbok, P., Glick, E., Mitchell, D., & Greiner D. (2012).International experience in nursing education: A review of the literature. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship. (9)1,1-21.

Leffers, J., & Mitchell, L. (2011). Conceptual models of partnership and sustainability on global health Public Health Nursing. (21)1, 91-102.

For this post I am going to raise two issues that I think that directly relate to sustainability in nursing education; the nature of health care systems being global and collaborative learning as an approach to save trees (which follows on from my post on technologies in teaching and learning). Both are closely related.

Keeping global health at the centre of this blog, sustainability has been defined by the World Health Organization (2002) as “the ability of a project to continue to function effectively, for the foreseeable future with high treatment coverage, integrated into available health care services, with strong community ownership, using resources supplied by the community and government” (cited by Leffers & Mitchell, 2011). In this sense, sustainability does not necessarily refer to saving trees, but to sustaining programs that are put in place. Often this becomes a political issue with many sustainable programs that impact on the health of communities becomes a political football, for an example in my nursing practice as a public health nurse, I see a more liberal government introduces health programmes that promote good health for children like ‘fruit in school’ while a more centre-right party may feel that health is a responsibility of the individual. My question is, ‘is this the case in education too?’ I suspect it is so. In Casey and Wilson (2005) article, the following questions should be asked about education programmes in order for them to be sustainable:

•        Can the module be run repeatedly?
•        Continuity of courses and curricula.
•        The real costs of operation. Mainstream course costs are often far from transparent or even discoverable; they are buried deep in general institutional costs. Flexible courses tend to be ‘bolted on’ and may be more visible, and hence are an easy target for cuts.
•        Teacher workloads  and capacity
•        Can the module be taught without the original author?
•        The storage of materials and supporting notes
•        Course evaluation.

Leffers and Mitchell (2011) claim that sustainable programs need to have “tools [that] are on-going assessments across organizational levels, strong infrastructure development for capacity building, collaboration among stakeholders, key leadership, expertise, program champions, opportunities for transition of leadership, appropriate resources, fit between the partnering stakeholders, adaptability, and ongoing education” (p 92-93). All these are applicable to OP and the School of Nursing.

The concept of global health was raised in a current article by Kulbok, Mitchell and colleagues (2012). One of the issues that these authors discuss, is that globalization of health has an impact on the sharing of information, policies, practices and outcomes, and that the sharing of this information needs to happen in the higher education institutions as much as in clinical practice, because one informs the other. They make this claim because they see that with globalization, the majority of nurses are going to work and practice either in another culture or with patients/clients/consumers from another culture, and with that in mind nursing students need to have a good understanding of the culture of their clients. An example is that this year there are 3 elective nursing students doing their “transition to RN” paper in Africa, and I wonder how well we have prepared them for this. Admittedly not all students will work in Africa, but it isn’t a huge leap to think that a large proportion of our students will work either with an African colleague or will nurse someone from the African continent, either in NZ or elsewhere.

 

References:

Casey, J. & Wilson, P. (2005). A practical guide to providing flexible learning in further and higher        education. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)

Kulbok, P., Glick, E., Mitchell, D., & Greiner D. (2012).International experience in nursing education: A review of the literature. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship. (9)1,1-21.

Leffers, J., & Mitchell, L. (2011). Conceptual models of partnership and sustainability on global health Public Health Nursing. (21)1, 91-102.