Enrichment Programme Takes Students Out of Their Comfort Zones
Dr Janet Wong | Associate Professor | Director, Bachelor of Nursing (Full-time) Programme
Traditional nursing education emphasized students’ clinical knowledge and skills with the hard skills training to care for patients. But increasingly it is recognised that soft skill development is important, too, to ensure nursing graduates are able to take on the modern-day demands of being case managers and problem solvers.
“We can gain hard skills from classes but soft skills, like being able to solve problems tactfully and flexibly, communicate and collaborate with different healthcare professionals such as doctors, dieticians and pharmacists, and to actively solve problems, are also necessary for successful patient care. The better we can perform in these areas, the more beneficial for patients, but these skills are not easily learnt or practiced in a classroom,” said Dr Janet Wong, Associate Professor and Director of Bachelor of Nursing (Full-time) Programme.
To address this issue, the School launched the Life Enrichment Learning (LE) programme in September 2019, which requires all new undergraduates to spend two periods outside Hong Kong on study, research or service-learning trips, typically for three or more weeks each time.
“Our aim is for students to learn to handle things independently without close supervision, and to do things differently. Travelling to other places gives them this opportunity to practice and test themselves,” Dr Wong said.
The trips will take place in the second semester of Year 3, which has been blocked off for this purpose, although students may also propose their own options and pursue these in the summers of Years 1-3. The School has prepared a list of options and students must indicate their preferences in their first year.
A pilot service-learning programme held in 2019 revealed the kind of learning that students can expect to engage in. Three students visited a rural area in Yunnan province where they observed differences in nursing practices compared with Hong Kong. For instance, the nurses there prepared all cotton balls together, rather than separately as is done in Hong Kong, but the students found this did not violate the aseptic technique and understood that the different practice was due to limited resources. Having said that, they were able to point out the application of alcohol to wound care which is not evidence-based.
The students were also surprised to find male and female patients housed in the same cubicle of the hospital wards, in some cases without even curtains separating them. The students conducted a simple survey with patients and nurses and found this situation was acceptable to them.
“This represents not only a kind of cultural practice, but also civilisation and patient privacy,” Dr Wong said. “Privacy is a basic human right which is also a key concept in nursing. Those patients may not realise what is patient privacy. As society advances, it is likely their awareness of this issue will increase. And nurses should be the advocates for protecting patients’ dignity and privacy.”
The students reflected on all these experiences in reflective journals, which will also be required for all participants of the LE programme. There will also be assessment of their onsite professional behaviour and onsite coursework. Students will also produce and present an electronic poster of their experiences. Their work will be monitored by supervisors from the School.
The School, Faculty of Medicine and University are all providing funding assistance as needed for the students to ensure everyone can participate in the LE programme.
Dr Wong added that she hoped students will find the LE programme to be as rewarding as her own six-month stay in the US during her PhD studies.
“I was born in Hong Kong and educated here. Going to a different part of the world made me reflect on myself much more. It made me think about what is Chinese culture and I realised there were differences in terms of how people think and manage problems,” she said. “I hope the LE programme will provide students with a similarly valuable opportunity for self-reflection and self-growth and eventually help to maintain and rediscover their passion for nursing and provide better care to their patients.”
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