Predictors of workforce retention among malawian nurse graduates from the GAIA nursing scholarship program: A mixed methods study

Abstract

Program/Project Purpose: The Center for Global Education Initiatives (CGEI) at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) created an interprofessional faculty and student global health grant program in 2014 to support faculty-initiated global health projects that include students from more than one school on campus (law, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, social work, nursing). The purpose of the grant program is to ensure that global health students in UMB's professional schools are taught the value and necessity of collaboration in global health practice and provided with sufficient opportunity to learn how to practice in a collaborative setting. Structure/Method/Design: The goal of the grant program is to provide financial incentives and logistical support to stimulate faculty to design global health projects for an interprofessional team of students. Our desired outcome is a broad range of interprofessional experiential learning projects that successfully teach designated global health and interprofessional education (IPE) learning objectives. Faculty members from any UMB school can apply for a one-time award of $10,000 to support a project that can be from 2-13 weeks in length. An interprofessional group of faculty review and select faculty awardees. CGEI staff then advertise the faculty projects and invite students from all UMB schools to apply to participate in a project. Selected students are awarded travel funds to support their participation. As part of the competitive application process, applicants are required to describe how their proposed project stimulates capacity building at the project site and/or if the proposed project is sustainable over time. The project teams are required to participate in 9-12 hours of pre-project IPE training in addition to any content requirements established by the faculty leader. Upon completion of the project, CGEI staff actively help awardees identify presentation, publication, and grant opportunities to share the results of the project and engage in additional research. Outcomes & Evaluation:We surveyed the first group of awardees (nine faculty and 33 students) pre-and post-project. The survey included quantatative and qualitative measures. Preliminary survey results indicate robust support for the grant program among students and faculty and a significant increase in multiple survey measures relating to global health and IPE learning objectives. In addition, both faculty and student appreciation for an interprofessional approach to global health greatly increased. An initial broad conclusion is that the availability of small grant funds coupled with logistical support is a strong incentive for faculty to create interprofessional global health projects. Going Forward: We plan to develop a validated survey tool that can evaluate the success of the grant program across the broad range of projects supported by the grant program. This will help determine which IPE training activities are most appropriate for interprofessional global health education. Funding: no outside fu...