A collaborative education effort launched this month
by the nursing schools at The Johns Hopkins University and
Peking Union Medical College will create the first
doctoral-level nursing program in China.
Faculty at the JHU and PUMC nursing schools will work
together to prepare Chinese nurses as leaders in their
country's higher education for nursing, nursing research
and health care administration. Their goal is to bring to
China and its health care system an internationally
recognized, doctoral-level model for Chinese nursing
education.
As in many countries throughout the world, China is
experiencing not just a shortage of nurses but also a
crisis in developing nurse leaders — those who will
educate future nurses. Because the country lacks the
doctoral-level nurse education programs that prepare these
leaders, nurses who seek a career in higher education,
research and administration must go abroad for their
education. Few return to China.
The joint JHU/PUMC program, funded by the China
Medical Board of New York, will develop a curriculum of
advanced nursing education that prepares and evaluates
three cohorts of doctorally educated Chinese nurses. The
program includes, at the end of the first year, a six-month
course of study at the JHU
School of Nursing.
Candidates then return to China for approval and initiation
of their China-based doctoral research.
Upon graduation from PUMC, these nurse leaders are
expected to remain in China and, in ongoing collaboration
with the JHU School of Nursing, to serve as nursing
education faculty, researchers and administrators.
"This is another milestone in our long history of
outstanding nursing education collaboration with PUMC,"
said Martha Hill, dean of the JHU School of Nursing, noting
that for nearly a century, JHU physicians and nurses have
worked with PUMC to bring the best of modern scientific
medicine and nursing to China. From 1919 to 1925, Anna D.
Wolf, a 1915 graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of
Nursing, was PUMC superintendent of nurses and, after
establishing a collegiate PUMC nursing education program,
served as the program's dean from 1924 to 1925. Wolf later
became director of nursing at The Johns Hopkins Hospital,
serving in that post from 1940 to 1955.
"It is a privilege to continue this tradition and to
have the opportunity now to create a model program that can
be replicated at key Chinese universities," Hill said.