July 25 -28, saw Clare Davis, the Education Programme Manager at the Children's Nursing Development Unit, jet off to Durban, in search of some winter sun, and more importantly, to attend the Southern African Association of Health Educationalists (SAAHE) annual conference. This was her first time engaging with SAHEE and she was excited to meet a new group of colleagues, hopefully aligned with her evolving focus of work.

Clare, co-authored with Minette Coetzee, presented a poster titled, ‘Strengthening the children’s nursing workforce in Africa: Design and launch of a suite of successful contextually aligned online professional development courses’. This gave her the opportunity to discuss the extending ‘Essentials of Nursing’ short course suite currently offered by the Children's Nursing Development Unit, specifically its design, the rationale for its need and initial observations of impact. Lessons were learnt about presenting at an education-focused conference that Clare will certainly note for next time 😊.  

‘Technology Enhanced Learning’ was a sub-theme of the conference and Clare reports listening to some insightful related presentations. Sadly, there appeared to be minimal use, or recognition of benefit, of a predominantly asynchronous design, by others but Clare did connect with others teaching online, perhaps the of which happened on the plane ride home! Isn’t it always the way!

The overall conference theme was ‘Decoding and recoding to transform for contextually relevant health professional education’ which was largely a nod to the rapidly developing world of Artificial Intelligence. On the last day, the University of KwaZuluNatal debating society, held a debate, proposing FOR and AGAINST ‘The use of Artificial Intelligence in Health Professions Education’. This was phenomenal to watch and combined with presentations throughout the conference, left Clare with a multitude of questions which she has brought back to the CNDU team for ongoing discussion.

As a final note, we give a shout out to Prof Champion N. Nyoni, a fellow nurse working at the University of the Free State, who was awarded the SAAHE distinguished teacher award and for next year’s conference, being held 2- 4 July in Bloemfontein.