Newswise — A collaborative education effort launched this month by the nursing schools at The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) will create the first nursing doctoral-level (PhD) 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 those who will educate future nurses—the nurse leaders. 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, Inc., 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 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," noted Dr. Martha N. Hill, Dean of the JHU School of Nursing. Hill explained 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 Hopkins School of Nursing, was PUMC Superintendent of Nurses and, after establishing a collegiate PUMC nursing education program, served as its dean from 1924 to 1925. Wolfe later became Director of Nursing at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1940 to 1955). Hill added, "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."
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