Why Is Global Health Significant in Nursing Practice?
The demographics of the United States population is progressively diversifying. Health care professionals must have global health knowledge to provide culturally sensitive care. Nurses are well positioned to lead efforts in global health due to their training in population-based care.
Several populations around the world do not have access to care that provides for their specific health care needs, often due to financial insufficiency and rural environments. The practice of global health—which emphasizes the implementation of transnational health studies to promote equitable health care—is meant to enhance the well-being of many populations worldwide.
The Importance of Preparing Nurses for Global Health
The current health crises related to social determinants of health—like economic stability, a safe living environment, and access to quality health care—affect many countries around the world. Recent infectious diseases like COVID-19, Ebola, and Zika have shown the world why viewing health care with a global lens is important for the future well-being of the world’s populations. Real-world global health experience is especially significant in preparing nurse graduates for clinical practice since it provides students with the confidence to help individuals and communities outside of their own life experiences. Especially in the changing cultural landscape of the U.S., awareness of the health practices and health needs in cultural or ethnic groups around the world allows nurses to better serve patients. Experience with global health has become more important in preparing for domestic and international health care.
Global Health as Clinical Experiences
Global health is intentionally incorporated into the curriculum for the prelicensure Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) at Northwest University’s Mark and Huldah Buntain College of Nursing. The Buntain College of Nursing is one of the only known nursing schools to require global health as part of the clinical practice requirements. Students are taught to integrate what they have learned in their local hospital and community health clinical practice experiences into diverse populations in both domestic and international locations. Nursing students and faculty engage with various populations around the world and sometimes within the U.S. during a three-week global health trip. In the past, students have traveled to India, Kazakhstan, Appalachia, rural Alaska, and many other locations.
Serving Populations
During their trips, students learn to care for populations within the health policies and systems of each individual location, providing culturally competent care to the populations living in the areas they visit. Since students often travel to locations where people have limited access to health care, they learn to provide care as nurses while also educating their clients on health and illness within the context of their culture and the accessible health care system.
A group of Northwest University nursing students who recently traveled to Belize reported that a vast majority of the rural population was unaware of the significance of their medical problems, often rationing out medication for conditions like diabetes and hypertension due to worry about having enough medications for later. Students employed levels of social entrepreneurship—a framework of developing practices that are meant to improve societal welfare without the goal of creating profits—to effectively aid the patients they served. Working with Hummingbird Medical Resources, a nonprofit based in Belize, students set up one-day health fairs in public parks where they provided health care and education to the many people who attended. Students also promoted and facilitated blood donations, which were used to help diminish the current blood shortage in Belize due to a severe lack of blood donations from the public.
A Student’s Unforgettable Experience in Taiwan
Though the global health trips are attended predominantly by prelicensure BSN students, those enrolled in the online Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) program are also given the opportunity to join the global health trip for one week.
One MSN student, Sarena Davis, recently traveled with other prelicensure students to Taiwan. "My time in Taiwan was unforgettable, and I'm so thankful I got to go on this trip,” she says. The students who traveled to Taiwan were able to practice nursing in a Taiwanese hospital and even witnessed a live open-heart surgery. Students actively participated in the care delivery team within the hospital throughout several departments, such as the Medical and Surgical Intensive Care, Cardiac Intensive Care, and Cardiac Stepdown units, contributing their nursing knowledge to support the hospital team. “The people at the hospital were so kind and generous and the nursing supervisors that I was able to sit down and talk with in order to answer questions for my master's class were so helpful,” Sarena goes on to say.
The nursing students who served patients in Taiwan will be able to better assist clients domestically that may come from a traditional Chinese framework regarding life experiences surrounding birth, preventative health care, and death.
Global health is important and influential in the practice of healthcare around the world. Its impact on nursing practice readily shapes the methods that nurses employ to provide care for every patient’s specific needs. Nursing education that includes transnational care as part of the curriculum can better prepare nurse graduates to care for diverse patients, communities, and populations of people. Engaging with global health initiatives and participating in international collaboration and advocacy efforts can give nurses the opportunity to make an impact on global population health goals and advance the goal of health for all.