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March 2018 | Edition 02
Dear
Colleagues,
There
have been tremendous developments at the School of Nursing and Midwifery,
Pakistan (SONAM, P) in the past couple of months. I am very excited to share
a summary of some of the important happenings with you today.
Strategic
Collaboration: Nursing Leaders’ Forum,
led by SONAM, P, is being formed to empower nurse leaders across Pakistan to
work for the sustained development of the profession through public-private
alliance. Inaugural meeting of this one-of-its-kind initiative, held in
January (followed up in March), was attended by thought leaders from 14
different nursing and midwifery institutes and hospitals who developed the
Forum’s Terms of References (TORs), vision and goals to take the initiative
forward.
Curriculum
Retreat: This year, one of our
strategic goals is to critically assess the existing curriculum for all
nursing and midwifery programmes; make recommendations and integrate
strategies in order to make the curriculum and our teaching methodology more
contemporary, evidence-based and innovative. All this has to be done keeping
in view the local community needs and the demands in the global health care
environment.
I
congratulate the Office of Teaching, Learning and Undergraduate Programmes
led by Khairulnissa Ajani on holding
a very successful inaugural session in March where the whole SONAM family
actively participated. I am thankful to the Provost for being a part of it as
well as Hans, Charles, Laila and Tariq for their incredible contribution.
International:
·
Dr Greta G. Cummings, Dean and Professor
Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta visited SONAM in February and also
delivered an informative session on building research initiatives. During her
meetings with the Provost and myself, increased collaboration between the two
entities was proposed around areas including the development of a Nurse
Practitioner Model, a Cohort based PhD programme for SONAM Faculty, and
collaboration with Chinese institutes among others.
·
A successful 4-week training programme was
held in February-March led by SONAM, P for capacity building of nurses from
Afghanistan to provide quality mental health nursing care to their patients
at Kabul Mental Health Hospital.
·
Nursing instructors from Ghazanfar Institute
of Health Sciences and Regional Institute of Health Sciences, Afghanistan had
a week-long visit to SONAM. The visit’s objective was to learn how SONAM
faculty members integrate nursing theory with clinical practice, and later
use this knowledge at their own nursing schools to enhance the
teaching-learning methodology.
Entity
Liaisons:
·
Joint faculty positions have been advertised
to increase liaison between SONAM, P and Service Lines AKUH, P. This will
help us leverage the expertise, resources and capacities of both the entities
for enhanced learning, mentorship and clinical supervision of our BScN
students; also giving the joint appointees a chance to expand their work
scope.
·
SONAM, P, in collaboration with Obs/Gyn
service line chief Dr Lumaan, is working on the Midwifery Led Model (MLM) at
AKUH that will allow competent and credentialed midwives to practice
independently.
Visits: SONAM, P was visited by the Pakistan Nursing Council (PNC)
members as well as MNCH Director for Sindh. The over-arching purpose of both
the visits was to evaluate the quality of our nursing and midwifery
programmes. The good news here is that the MNCH Director for Sindh offered
support to our Maternal, Neonatal, Child Health & Midwifery Clinical
Stream to expand the reach of the programme across all the provinces. We are
hoping this collaboration would go a long way in achieving a lot of our
strategic goals for this year and ahead.
Award: Please join me in congratulating Shahnaz Shahid, the Head of
our MNCH and Midwifery clinical stream who was awarded Second place in the
Midwife of the Year 2018 category announced by the British Journal of
Midwifery – BJM Awards.
I would also like to
congratulate our faculty member Sharifa Lalani on completing twenty amazing
years with the institute.
I would like to tell you
all how much I appreciate the dedication and professionalism shown by each
one of you. You all are a driver of the progress we are achieving at SONAM,
P with each passing day. We have a lot more to
look forward to in 2018 and I wish you all the best to continue to be
committed to excellence.
With best regards
Dr David Arthur
Dean
The Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery
Karachi, Pakistan
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