UCC SONM 25 Year Book

UCC / School of Nursing and Midwifery

The focus of health and social care policy changes as demographic and societal challenges evolve. This is evidenced by the Irish Department of Health’s focus on the reorientation of service provision to community and primary care. Nurses and midwives will thus have to be prepared to support more health care monitoring and complex interventions within the community and home contexts. Technology enhanced communication and artificial intelligence have an important transformative role in this. The focus on disease prevention, health promotion and supported self-care needs to be emphasized in the context of keeping people well for longer and out of the acute care services. The diagnostic and monitoring function of the nurse and a focus on managed care and integrated care pathways will mean that more nurses will take on care coordination roles and advanced practice roles. Many of these will potentially be on a contractual and virtual basis in the future. Graduate entry programmes for nurses is a natural next step in this as nursing would benefit greatly from the merging of disciplinary knowledge and skills from many different contexts providing new lenses through which health and social care challenges can be examined. Interdisciplinary programmes which link information technology, business and entrepreneurship with nursing and midwifery are part of the educational preparations needed to meet the societal challenges outlined. Promoting nursing and midwifery as rewarding and respected career choices whilst addressing gender imbalance, and educational access pathways are also important considerations for the school. The integration of services across hospitals and community settings necessitates the reimaging of educational provisions to help with cross boundary communication, leadership and coordination roles of nurses. In addition, joint clinical–academic appointments form part of the solution to some of the emergent challenges. Bringing together the clinical, academic and research roles of academics means that faculty will become more clinically focused in their academic and research pursuits. An appreciation of and respect for inequalities and differences mean that global relationships should be nurtured. The classroom needs to become more outward focused, with the United Nations sustainable development goals forming part of our underpinning philosophical perspectives. Student and faculty exchanges, international research partnerships and diversity in the classroom will connect the next generation of nurses and midwives which will build on the work of our nursing predecessors. The value of the student–preceptor learning relationshipwill have to be protected and nourished as clinical practice environments change and the value of clinical practice learning experiences in developing nursing and midwifery competencies is reaffirmed. Concurrently the didactic lecture is being superseded by more immersive and student centred learning approaches as

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