Authors: Sharon Elizabeth Metcalfe, Ed.D, MSN, RN
In the current globally challenging economic climate, pediatric staff nurses across the world are rarely able to travel and learn from one another in clinical settings such as children’s hospitals, ambulatory care clinics, or through pediatric home care agencies. Staff nurses normally work for agencies and are employed for twelve hours at the bedside and due to increased acuity of young children and adolescents, are often unable to attend continuing education or academic offerings to broaden their perspectives of care delivery. This is especially true for pediatric nurses that may be considering traveling to another country and learning through a clinical immersion experience to increase their awareness of the facets of caring for children from other ethnic backgrounds and cultures. The expense of travel and the challenge of coordinating logistics often make the chance to meet pediatric nurses abroad only a dream. Additionally, many nurses have families and homecare obligations that prohibit lengthy travel abroad. This article describes an innovative international clinical immersion partnership between one university school of nursing and children’s hospital in the United Kingdom and a children’s hospital and southeastern university school of nursing in the United States. This article will describe the opportunities for networking between similar specialties of nurses. Two diverse countries joined in an educational partnership to bring opportunities to share dialogue and clinical rotations to both nursing students and pediatric practicing nurses that made travel possible.
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