Posted: 8/18/2010
Whether in Baltimore, Beirut, or Bangkok, todays nurses live in a world of interdependent nations, instantaneous communication, and cross-cultural collaboration. The latest issue of Johns Hopkins Nursing magazine highlights these global nurses who are joining the worlds thinkers, decision-makers, innovators, and trail blazers to improve health for all.
In “A Global Profession,” Martha N. Hill, PhD, RN, Dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, leads a virtual discussion with an international team of global health leaders. The group addresses the role of nursing in global health policy, the necessity of interdisciplinary solutions to global health problems, and the future challenges of a world-wide nursing shortage. The key to future success, according to Anne Marie Rafferty, DPhil (Oxon), RGN, of Kings College London, will be collaboration across disciplines and borders: “We need to encourage nurses to be engineers of change.”
The world is desperate for such changes in healthy living and healthcare delivery, yet is facing a growing nursing shortage. To reverse this trend means creating new knowledge, infrastructure, and a strong nursing workforce around the globe. In “No Boundaries, No Barriers,” Hopkins nurses share their successes in building capacity by forging partnerships, leveraging technology, and developing an intimate familiarity with specifically chosen locales.
A global map highlighting the Johns Hopkins nurses who engage in and lead international health improvement efforts is the centerpiece of “Caring Around the World.” These students, faculty, and alumni are running, staffing, and advising health systems, academic institutions, NGOs, government programs, and research studies in support of relief efforts, basic care, and health improvement for patients worldwide.
Closer to home, Deborah Trautman, PhD, RN, the Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Policy, focuses on U.S healthcare issues by breaking down “America’s New Health Policy” and what it means for nurses. In “Lessons from Dying,” assistant professor Jodi Shaefer, PhD, RN, speaks about her husband’s death and gives advice to new nurses working with grieving families. And a Baltimore oncology nurse races a dragon boat with breast cancer survivors in “Sign of the Dragon.”