Authors (in the middle) with Chinese colleagues visiting JAMK on 14 January 2020.
Due to the ageing society, China is facing a shortage of nurses to provide care for the growing number of older people. Consequently, educational institutions are challenged with educating a large number of nurses for gerontological care. For the renewal of the Chinese HEIs’ nursing curricula through gerontological nursing, the GeNEdu project has developed a set of competences that are required for the current and future nurses to be able to provide high-quality care for older people.
The development process included several steps. Firstly, a situational analysis to identify the current situation concerning elderly care and gerontological nursing in China was conducted. Secondly, a literature search to identify international trends in gerontological nursing was performed. Thirdly, an extended literature and document analysis on a national and international level was performed, resulting in a list of selected competences for gerontological nurses. These three steps were used to develop a competence framework with six (6) core competences and corresponding learning outcomes: the competence framework has been verified with a Delphi review with two rounds of experts from China and Europe.
The GeNEdu competences represent a combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that can be transferred to different contexts in the field of gerontological nursing. Not only will the students learn how to provide gerontological care, but they will also learn about the organisation of gerontological nursing care, communication and collaboration, health promotion, professional behaviour, evidence-based nursing, and lifelong learning.
Do you want to know more about how we are going to prepare our future Chinese gerontological nursing students to face the main challenges and future needs for gerontological nursing in China? Stay tuned – we will continue with this subject in our next blog post!
Authors: Bea Dijkman and Marjolein Annen, Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen
Read more about the GeNEdu project here!
