Shaping multi-ethnic nursing practice

One of the most gratifying things about research is to find your work influencing policy, and that has been the case in collaborative research undertaken by the Ethnicity and Social Policy Research Unit (ESPR).

Through a collaborative project with the School of Health Studies Professor Charles Husband, Dr Kate Gerrish and Ms Jennifer Mackenzie in 1996 completed a study of the extent to which nurses were equipped to meet the needs of a multi-ethnic client population. That £100,000 project, funded by the English Board of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, was published by the Open University Press as Nursing for a Multiethnic Society (Gerrish et al, 1996). It underlined the need for nursing education to prepare nurses to work with clients from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. The recommendations of that project subsequently informed the policy of the ENB and resulted in their planning a major new initiative.

Funded by the General Nursing Council and the Department of Health, this £250,000 project was conceived to produce flexible learning materials for developing transcultural competencies across a wide range of health and social care settings. Under the direction of Professor Husband, a collaborative team with colleagues at the School of Health Studies and at De Montfort University, and the 1990 Trust, are currently engaged in producing and piloting materials which will make a significant contribution to improving the quality and cultural appropriateness of nursing care within the NHS. This collaboration with colleagues in other academic institutions, and with a major national minority ethnic organisation, the 1990 Trust, is a positive example of how university research and expertise can feed directly into concrete innovation in health care practice.

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University - Public Relations - Annual Reports - 2000 Contents - Research

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