A Nurse Prepared for the World

I am a registered midwife and a nursing and midwifery lecturer and advisor. I was asked by an institute of medical sciences in Colombo, which collaborates with Birmingham City University, Durham University and Bristol University among others, to design a module tailored to the needs of student nurses in Sri Lanka. When designing the module, I knew that one day, the student nurses would very likely go on to practice on the world stage, beyond their nation's borders.

I was asked to do this as I had lived in Sri Lanka for over 3 years at the time, and had therefore gained experience of the country's healthcare system, as well as being a qualified midwife in my birth country, the Czech Republic, and a registered midwife in the UK.

The main aim of the module was to make students aware of the wider role of the nurse globally, the need for effective communication with the soft skills of kindness, compassion and empathy at the heart, and themselves in the mirror as future health practitioners, identifying their strengths and how to better themselves. In recent decades, it has been increasingly recognised that soft skills (sometimes referred to as emotional intelligence) play an important role in healthcare education, and must be developed alongside other professional skills (Dolev et al, 2022).