Continued Nursing School Tour in Uganda

Our delayed post from Friday, November 20, 2009. We finally have an internet connection again.

Today was a day for touring more nursing schools. We started early a.m. and headed East.

Our first stop was the Uganda Christian University. They have two programs of interest to TGF; a BSN conversion and a masters program (MSN). This school has only one of two MSN programs in nursing in all of Uganda. These programs are particularly important because MSN level nurses are critical to teaching baccalaureate nurses. Here, nurse educators, or tutors as they are called, must be one cadre higher than those they instruct.

The lack of tutors is the biggest constraint in increasing the intake of nursing programs here so supporting these programs will be instrumental in our work to provide nursing scholarships and quality of nursing education. Often we will visit a school and the tutor to student ratio is an abysmal 1:100. During our tour we walked into a leadership class for the MSN program. In order for the nursing profession to advance it is very important that nursing students gain an empowered mindset and learn the skills to be future nurse leaders.

Next we headed further east to a town called Jinja and toured the Jinja School of Nursing and Midwifery. The faculty was partially friendly and we enjoyed our visit. A summary of our agenda when visiting each school is to meet the principal and faculty, get their input on nursing education and nursing practice, learn about the school’s infrastructure and recourse and teaching capacity, details on the programs offered, scholarship costs and the like.

We stayed the night in Jinja and enjoyed an evening of R&R at a hotel near the Source of the Nile.