Case study: Using innovative curriculum design and interdisciplinary, international collaboration to develop a nurse practitioner leader to impact global health outcomes

Abstract

<p>The world is becoming smaller. We are now touched by human conditions that were once foreign and far-removed. Technology and transportation provide access to people and places that were once inaccessible. Increasing numbers of students enter NP programs with dreams of traveling to developing countries to make a difference. This presentation chronicles the story of how one student's unrelenting vision to deliver hospice care to the terminally ill suffering from HIV/AIDS and cancer in the remote villages of Kenya laid the groundwork for NP faculty to develop a rich and engaging plan of study that provided the opportunity to balance ideas, experience, and critical perspectives with evidence-based knowledge and theoretical frameworks. Reflective journaling, intra/inter professional connections, institutional resources, and international collaboration, were the underpinnings used to structure a solid basis for understanding, critically thinking, communicating, problem-solving, negotiating and evaluating the political, social, economic, and cultural opportunities, challenges, and barriers related to one specific issue in one specific area of the world. This presentation explores the development and implementation of a model for curriculum enhancement to develop NPs as leaders who make significant and sustained contributions to improving health outcomes in a globalized and increasingly diverse world. Implications Globalization is changing the way we live and work in the world. The responsibility and challenge for today's NP educator is to prepare Advance Practice Nurses who are ready to practice in an interconnected and interdependent world. It takes new thinking and innovative teaching and learning strategies to build NP leaders who can evaluate information from a comparative perspective, communicate effectively across cultures, and engage in problem solving across boundaries and cultures to impact global health outcomes.</p>