WHO informal consultation on quality improvement and faculty development in nursing and midwifery education
Date: November 2011
WHO CC involvement: Professor John Daly
WHO CC UTS hosted an informal consultation for three global working groups to convene, discuss and action three areas of work to improve nursing and midwifery education. WHO, Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) and nursing/midwifery leaders and educators from Laos, Cambodia, China, Samoa, Philippines and PNG attended the consultation.
The overall aim of the informal consultation was to facilitate improvement in the quality of nursing and midwifery education through
- Development, validation, application and testing of evaluation criteria and processes for global academic quality standards;
- Operational testing and analysis and monitoring of nursing educational outcome/practice competencies, linked to primary health care; and
- Faculty capacity-building core courses and supportive mentoring developed and tested across a network of institutions.
Strategic interventions to better address population health needs and rapidly changing practice environments through nursing and midwifery contributions are threefold: (1) addressing the education-practice gap by applying and measuring entry to practice core competencies; (2) enabling educational institutes to prepare more competent graduates programmatically through the application and use of educational quality standards; and (3) equipping educators with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and judgment required for excellence in nursing/midwifery education.
Several teleconferences and working groups were held during 2010 and 2011 to commence this important work.
