TRaNSforM
Training Requirements and Nursing Skills for Mobility in Health Care
The ‘TRaNSforM’ project involved developing a set of key skills and competences for nurses to enable them to deal effectively with the social and cultural issues of an increasingly diverse workforce and client base. The partners in Belgium, Portugal, Finland, Turkey, Germany, Ireland and England looked at ways to incorporate intercultural learning into existing work-based learning and to map training to the European Qualifications Framework.
Nurses often have more than one role and it therefore seemed appropriate to divide activity into the three separate areas of work. The following provocative statements or benchmark standards were collated by the group as a first step toward producing learning outcomes for the skills framework.
Nurse as Practitioner
- All nurses possess intercultural communication skills
- All nurses will be aware that cultural differences exist and that values and beliefs affect patient uptake of healthcare services
- All nurses will have an awareness of equality and diversity within holistic nursing care
- All nurses will develop open-mindedness in order to provide optimal intercultural care
- All nurses will adapt and be flexible in responding to different healthcare needs
- All nurses will be able to work individually and as part of an inter-professional multicultural team
Nurse as Educator
- All nurses in the E.U. will appreciate that there are differing localised values and standards in healthcare practice
- All nurses will embrace cultural diversity in their educational practice
- All nurses will have experience with, or exposure to, other cultures whether it be in their own country or abroad
Nurse as Clinical Leader
- All nurses should act as a mentor to incoming nurses and help them build on their existing knowledge
- All nurses will act as role models and companions for incoming nurses as well as the existing team in order to build good intercultural working relationships
- As a clinical leader the nurse will act as visionary in enabling multicultural cohesion in patient care
- As a clinical leader, the nurse, as an expert in their specific professional field will facilitate change to improve standards and routines to embrace multicultural care