Introducing Connie Delaney - School of Nursing - University of ...

BY AMY BARRETT
Back to
the Future
Nurse educators and policymakers from three former
Soviet republics reshape nursing in Central Asia
When Professor Sandra Edwardson, PhD, RN, FAAN, and five
other faculty members toured health-care facilities in Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in January 2004, they saw medical
devices that haven’t been used in the United States for years.
“Their hospitals are probably 1930s and ’40s vintage,” Edwardson
says. “Some of the equipment I haven’t ever used.”
Likewise, when representatives of the three former Soviet
republics visited Minnesota last October, sat in on nursing classes,
and observed nurses in action, they found themselves in equally
unfamiliar territory. Not only was the equipment different, so were
the roles of doctors and nurses.
They were surprised, for example, that U.S. nurses commonly
use stethoscopes and otoscopes in routine health assessments of
patients. In their countries, only a doctor would use such tools
to examine a patient. “There, nurses are doing things that would
be done by housekeeping staff or nursing assistants in this
country,” Edwardson says.
But that may change, if Edwardson and a team from the
School of Nursing are successful in their efforts to help the three
Central Asian countries improve nursing education and expand
the leadership capacity of nurses.
Over the next couple of years, an $800,000 grant from the
American International Health Alliance and the U.S. Agency for
International Development will provide much-needed education
materials and new equipment to the three countries. It will also
provide several additional opportunities for delegations from both
continents to visit each other.
Participating in the Nursing Education and Leadership Project
with Edwardson are faculty members Donna Bliss, Laura Duckett,
Saabyrul Kozhomkulova, Bishkek
Nursing College (filming) and
Sandra Edwardson (background)
watch as Nuridin Vohidov, Bukhara
State Medical Institute (left) and
Kalkaman Ayapov, Almaty Nursing
College (right) check the vital signs
of the SimMan in the U of M
Interprofessional Education and
Resource Center.
SoN and Kyrgyzstan teams pose in the snowy mountains
of Almaty, Kyrgyzstan. Sandra Edwardson is fourth from the left,
Marilee Miller third from right.
Carol O’Boyle, Laila Gulzar, Cheryl Robertson, Margaret Plumbo,
Cathy Juve, and retired associate dean Marilee Miller, with staff
member Stefannie Anderson providing support. Edwardson, who
took a one-year sabbatical after serving as SoN’s dean from 1990
to 2004, returned to her faculty position this fall.
After visiting schools recommended by the AIHA, the team
selected two from each country, then met with representatives
from the schools “to define what they wanted to accomplish,
what we could offer and come to consensus on what our goals
would be,” Edwardson says.
It was hard to know where to start. “Right now, they don’t
have nursing licensure,” Edwardson says. “They’re just beginning
to develop registration systems for nurses, and just in the last
two to three years they created professional associations.”
Last year, Edwardson and her team decided to focus on how
to upgrade entry-level nursing education programs to approximate
the US BSN. This year, the team has been focusing on master’slevel
education and hosted the October visit of a second delegation
from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Whereas the first group included only faculty and administrators
from the schools, this one consisted mainly of nursing faculty
and representatives from the Ministries of Health, who set the
curriculum with which nursing schools must comply. Most nursing
school faculty there are physicians, so most of the visitors are
physicians as well.
While in Minnesota, the Central Asian visitors saw BSN and
advanced practice nurses in action in several settings, from Mayo
Clinic to nontraditional sites such as community clinics.
“Since most of what distinguishes BSN nurses from other
nurses is knowledge work that you can’t see, we’d had a nurse
come and do a case presentation and explain the thought process
that he or she used in developing and administering care,”
Edwardson says. “We’re also invited advanced practice nurse-anddoctor
teams to talk about how their roles overlap and complement
one another and how they’ve worked that through.”
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