Fifth Child Nurse Educator’s Forum hosted by UCT’s Child Nurse Practice Development Initiative
Established in 2015, the fifth UCT’s Child Nurse Educator’s Forum took place this year from 17th – 19th September 2019. Hosted by UCT’s Child Nurse Practice Development Initiative, the purpose of this Forum is to establish a community of children’s nursing educators in the southern and east African region.
Prior to 2018 this Forum had been for South African Child Nurse Educators, then in 2018 we invited Nurse Educators from IUM, Windhoek, Namibia. This year it was wonderful to open up the Forum even further to a total of 20 delegates from South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The focus of this year’s Forum was threefold:
- Begin to establish the role of children’s nurses in the region
- Consider together the nature of students and strategies for teaching and facilitating learning
- Pool and build our resources within a peer community of practice
It was a wonderful time of engagement with colleagues from across the continent as we discussed the role of children’s nurses and how to best prepare them for practice. In addition to this we also spent time beginning to pull together the first draft for a children’s nursing programme core curriculum.