Adult Nursing lecturers from the Faculty of Health and Applied Social Sciences have recently completed a benchmarking exercise and report with Finnish Universities, North Karelia University of Applied Sciences and Savonia University of Applied Sciences, with the aim to raise the standards for nurse education.
The report, ‘Working in Partnership: International Benchmarking in the improvement of students’ practice among three universities’, focuses on benchmarking clinical practice of nursing students.
The purpose of the report, which was funded by the Finnish Government, was to raise discussion about the development of students’ practice in higher education as well as to demonstrate how benchmarking could be a useful tool to develop education-related issues in international collaboration.
Visits between the institutions revealed a variety of good practices such as partnership between higher education institutes and practice organisations; service user involvement in developing education; action plan practice in challenging situations and mentoring systems.
The results of the benchmarking exercise will be used to develop social and health care education, facilitate student exchanges between the partner institutions and provide information for future international seminars.
Head of Urgent, Acute and Secondary Care, Lorraine Shaw and Faculty Senior Lecturer, Judith Guthrie, led on the project from LJMU.
Judith said of the project, “This project helped forge close links with the Universities of North Karelia and Savonia and has contributed to the development of Nurse Education in Finland. The exchange of both staff and students has contributed to our Nursing Programmes and we look forward to continuing this collaboration in the future.”
Irma Mikkonen, Senior Lecturer at Savonia University commented, “I think that the most notable of the good practices that I learned during the benchmarking visit was the partnership between the educational organisation and the practice placements at LJMU. The collaboration was good and efficient. In addition, nurses, as professionals, seemed to have the responsibility of preparing the next generation of professionals. This is something that I would like to transfer to Finland! I feel that benchmarking is a good tool in international and intercultural collaboration aiming to develop education.”
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