Effects of a global health nursing program on Vietnamese and South Korean students

Abstract

This study evaluated the improvement of global health nursing knowledge and attitude of participants in a program developed using a students' needs assessment of global health nursing competency obtained in a previous study. The program comprised a lecture, group work, and field activities based on six global health nursing competence modules over a one-week period. There were 59 participants, 31 from South Korea and 28 from Vietnam. A pre-post survey was undertaken to measure knowledge change, and thematic content analysis was used to further understand attitude change. The overall score increased from 21.02 ± 3.36 before the program to 28.10 ± 6.56 after the program, showing a statistically significant difference (p < .05). The change in the perception of knowledge on the healthcare system was high (from 1.53 ± 0.63 to 3.37 ± 4.23; p < .001); however, a difference in the perception of knowledge of the functions of the United Nations and World Health Organization was not significant after the program for Vietnam students (p < .293). Ten sub-themes of thematic content were derived and regrouped into five themes, resulting in three domains: global health competence, global leadership competence, and cultural competence. The global health nursing program grew students' knowledge and attitudes. Further studies on the long-term program effects are needed to generalize the global health nursing program.

Capacity Development in an Undergraduate Nursing Program in Vietnam

“…In this study, the main areas of faculty training in previous research were upgrading knowledge and skills, teaching method, transforming theory into practice, research ability, leadership, and clinical education capacity as demonstrated in previous studies (3, 4, 6). Throughout this project, nursing curriculum redesign was focused on competency improvement of nursing graduates and problem-based learning as a new teaching method as demonstrated by Ghalenoei et al (17).…”

“…After students' needs assessment among Korean, American, and Vietnamese students, this program was designed, revised, and implemented. This program was operated for 1 week at Hanoi and Hue city in 2015 with 30 Korean and Vietnamese students, respectively, and the effects of this program were analyzed by Kang et al (6). The results were prominent for knowledge change in the healthcare system, function of the United Nations and WHO, and attitude change in cultural and global leadership.…”

“…According to Evans et al (15), Kang et al (6), and Shin et al (16), the effect of the redesigned curriculum takes more than 4 years as the graduates gradually apply the new nursing curriculum. In most research programs, faculty training was approached in two ways: one for present faculty and the other for faculty candidates.…”

“…Regarding student leadership programs for guiding visionaries in the nursing profession, there were several student-partnership programs before this project, based on a project review of Kang et al (11). However, Vietnam and Korean students increased their creative thinking and nursing leadership through this project more than in the past (6). …”

“…These recommendations were also applied to a low-resource setting country; however, it would be very difficult to improve a health care system without human resource development. Much research on nursing program evaluation has examined general programs; however, the results of previous studies by Njie et al (3), Koto et al (4), Kang (5), and Kang, et al (6) revealed that only a few studies were focused on global health or global health nursing.…”