T UTU NM

1. Quality and Safety: We must have a nurse/midwife who can drive the cost of care down while driving the safety and quality of care up.

2. Knowledge Development: We need a nurse/midwife who is not just a consumer of knowledge for evidence-based practice; but can engage meaningfully in developing and disseminating nursing/midwifery knowledge and science through research and innovation

3. ICT in Health: We must have a nurse who is not averse to the utilization and integration of information technology in the care/management of patients and prevention of disease but one who will run to it and readily embrace it.

4. Healthcare Reforms: We need a nurse/midwife who can lead the next generation of healthcare reforms.

5. Business of Healthcare: Key factors driving healthcare reforms in Uganda include healthcare disparities, demographic shifts, dual burden of disease, resource scarcity and unsustainable costs of care, access issues, suboptimal outcomes, improvement in quality of care, fee-for-service systems, insurance-driven health systems etc. To be a major player in shaping healthcare reforms, we need a NM who understands the business of healthcare.

6. Accountable: We need a nurse/midwife who is accountable for their own actions, while working autonomously, and as an equal partner within interdisciplinary teams

7. Visionary/Strategi Leader: We need a nurse/midwife who is strategic; can envision the future including understanding challenging environments, the burden of disease including NCDs, different modes of care, shifting demographics, innovation, rapidly evolving demographics etc.

8. Cultures of Health: We need a nurse/midwife who can lead the primary healthcare agenda and who is engaged in building a culture of health and developing effective nursing practices for eliminating gaps and disparities in healthcare.

9. Compassionate: We need them to do all these things while remaining compassionate, evidence-based and person-centred.

10. Wellness: Above all, we need a nurse/midwife whose well-being to execute these duties is highly prioritized in government budgets year after year for the next century (NAM, 2021)

In Sum: Nurses and midwives constitute the largest health workforce. From a business perspective, this strength also translates into the largest expenditure an issue that continues to plague the capacity of the profession to garner necessary investment and funding. This subsequently has an impact on the capacity to rigorously pursue the production of an efficient workforce with relevant competencies—a critical role of not just the nursing and midwifery education sector, but also the regulator (Bvumbwe & Mtshali, 2018)

Of note, it is important to rapidly address intractable challenges that continue to stand in the way of pragmatic strategies for advancing the nursing and midwifery agenda:

• To build on what the country has achieved so far and to drive future transformation, there is a need to bolster strategic leadership at all levels.

• Transitioning from vocationally trained nurses and midwives (who are the majority) to basic and higher degrees requires innovative curricula, education investment and funding, and enabling regulation these are critical ingredients. Past-century experiences of underinvestment in these groups of professionals will not yield the type of NM the country seeks to have.

• Documented critical shortages of regulatory staff need urgent attention.

• There is a need to address the continuing inadequate productive capacity of NM training institutions—including critical shortages of learning resources and investing in faculty development for nursing and midwifery education, training, and research (Mitchell et al., 2014).

• Nurses and midwives are part of Uganda's human capital development agenda. A key group for achieving Universal Healthcare Coverage. If the country wants better, highly qualified (both in quantity and quality), efficient nurses and midwives, they must be empowered to practice to the full extent of their training.

It is all going to take coordination, collaboration, and support. And I hope that as we reflect on this centennial, we can all make some commitments and engage in the required heavy lifting.

References

UNMC (2022). UNMC 100 years anniversary. November 2022. Centenary Magazine

Uganda Legal Information Institute (1996). Nurses and Midwives Act 1996. Accessed at https://old.ulii.org/ug/legislation/consolidated-act/274

Bvumbwe, T., & Mtshali, N. (2018). Nursing education challenges and solutions in Sub Saharan Africa: an integrative review. BMC nursing, 17(1), 1-11.

Mitchell, A., Zuber, A., Quain, E., Hall, C. M., Foradori, L., & Lim, C. K. (2014). Building capacity of training institutions and Ministries of Health in sub-Saharan Africa: The PEPFAR approach. Annals of Global Health, 80(3).

Rose Clarke Nanyonga

Associate Prof NLMP

Vice Chancellor

Clarke International University @ @RoseNanyongaCla www.ciu.ac.ugCongratulations to the UNMC

National Health Care conference (NHCC) Uganda - the knowledge-sharing platform for Nurses and Midwives, a registered charity organisation in the United Kingdom, whose aim is to foster shared learning by empowering Nurses and Midwives in Uganda and beyond with skills, competencies, and tools to deliver improved care by outsourcing experts and training institutes in different nursing fields to foster shared learning and raise the profile of Nurses and Midwives partnered with another organisation; Midwife-led Community Transformation (MILCOT) is a community organization located in Nansana Municipality; it brings Midwifery services out of labour suit and makes them closer to the community through preventive initiatives focusing on the provision of Sexual and Reproductive Health services and survival skills to marginalized adolescents and young adults with a focus on the prevention of teenage and unplanned pregnancies.

NHCC Uganda collaborates with MILCOT to work together for this Virtual Simulated Placement (VSP) application to enhance capacity building for early career Nurses and midwives in leadership development in Uganda.

The VSP is a program funded by the Burdette Trust for Nursing as part of the Nursing Now Challenge. Coventry University leads it. A leading institute in VSP. The project brings together three partners to obtain a global perspective.

Twenty-two early-career Nurses and Midwives from four Regional Referral hospitals (RRHs) have been successfully enrolled on the platform and have commenced the program. Three Core Leadership Competencies (Collaborating and building interprofessional teams, Advocacy in the clinical area, and Integrating quality and safety in organisation culture) are to be used as focal points where four scenarios (two bespoke and two collaboratives) have been designed for the learning outcomes. In addition, digital literacy will be enhanced for all colleagues working on the project.

The project is scheduled to complete in January, with a final workshop scheduled for 16th February 2023 to bring all the learners from all four clusters together. Perhaps the first of its kind in Uganda, both organisation teams believe this approach will give compelling comparable parameters for the final report on the barriers to CPD for nurses and midwives, especially the new advanced VSP training proposed in this project.

Elizabeth Pearson, CEO NHCC Uganda - With the advancement of technology, new ways of learning are emerging; adopting this approach will allow colleagues, even in Low to Middle-Income countries like Uganda, to continue achieving their learning outcomes. There will always be the need for face-to-face learning and assessments, but VSP is an additional learning resource. We are in the 4th Industrial revolution, and as a fraternity, we need to move along the rest of the sectors. There has been a massive increase in research within the area of simulation. Alongside a huge growth in its use, everyone has begun to see how useful it is for health education, especially after such a difficult time with the lockdown disrupting learning. We are glad we are working with leaders in this area to bring learning and development to our own settings. There is a lot of learning, and they have been incredibly supportive, and we have all worked together, perhaps in a way that we haven’t worked before. And partnering with a local organisation, MILCOT, to come together after the difficulties caused by the pandemic has been a bonus.

Harriet Nayiga, Director- MILCOT - “I am happy for this collaboration between National Health Care Conferences Uganda and MILCOT to implement the Virtual Simulated Placement project in Uganda. The program is going to equip nurses and midwives with leadership skills and digital literacy through shared learning with other global nurses and midwives. I strongly hope that they will translate these skills into the quality of care given to patients and grow as competent nurse leaders in their areas of influence.”

For more information, please contact:- nhccuganda@gmail.com or visit the website www.nhccuganda.com or milcotcharity@gmail.com

Please find below a list of useful contacts to forward your concerns appropriately.

UNMC queries:- info@unmc.ug

UNMU:- info@unmu.ug

CPD APP concerns: martin@unmc.ug

Education and training Standards:- Department of Nursing at Ministry of Health

BTVET (Min of Education and sports) QUESTIONS? CALL: 0417 893600 (PRO) Mobile 0777108170

Benevolent fund: - Department of Nursing at Ministry of Health, Uganda Some of the associations

AGNMU: graduates@agnmu.org

Critical Care Association:president@ccnau.org

Midwifery Association: nationalmidwivesassociationug@gmail.com

Nursing and Midwives Society: info@nursesandmidwivessociety.org

Emergency Care Society of Uganda:- admin@ecsuganda.org

Palliative care Association of Uganda:- pxau.admin@pcau.org.ug

NMLTT (Think-Tank Leaders):- uganursemidwife.leaders@gmail.com

Writing articles for publication on NHCC Uganda website:editors.nhccuganda@gmail.com

Nursing Now Campaign Uganda:- nursingnowuganda@gmail.com