PLENARY SESSION: DEVELOPING CLINICAL CURRICULA IN NURSING PRACTICE TO FACE FREE TRADE ERA

Abstrak

Nursing education plays a vital role in producing capable nurses to generate best nursing services.  Although there are diverse approaches in developing and managing education programs, dynamicity of health care demands calls for continuous creation of innovative teaching and learning, especially in clinical dimension.  Education is sensitive to changes in health care systems when nursing is a practice based discipline, clinical training is crucial.  It is also true in the context of free trade.  

This presentation examines critical issues arisen with free trade context and how the health care system should react and make certain changes to accommodate the applicable health and nursing services.  It also proposes 4 essential steps in developing clinical curriculum in nursing and how education institutes, health care facilities, and stakeholders to health care and nursing involved in the process of curriculum transformation. 

Initiatives and innovations in nursing training are subject to organizational culture and ways of working.  What works in Thailand may not work well in other countries.  The process in developing and managing a nursing training program is culturally defined and committed to the best in teaching and learning.  The matter of “how you organize resources and facilities and manage learning culture†is crucial for developing of the richest possible teaching environment to promote interactive learning.  The clinical training enhances the active learning that fosters greater understanding and more advanced clinical reasoning. 

The learning centers both the simulations and at the practice settings have been recognized as key factor for the success in clinical teaching and learning, especially the ones at the practice settings.  The presentation ends with proposing strategies in improving nursing clinical training programs through developing the learning centers, to encourage the connection of sciences and culture in health and nursing services, research findings, into teaching and learning. 

Using information and knowledge emerging from my previous community based research in the community health care system as foundation of this review.  There are 4 components in this presentation; they are 1)issues of health and health related that are arisen in the free trade context, 2)essential steps in identifying strategies to enhance development of clinical curriculum and improving teaching and learning innovations in nursing, 3)key factors for the success in clinical curriculum management and innovative teaching and learning, 4)strategies in developing clinical curriculum in nursing.