12 May 2019: ENhANCE marks International Nurses Day in Kuopio, Finland

International Nurses Day is celebrated across the globe on 12 May, the birthday of Florence Nightingale. According to the ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses[1]  “Nurses render health services to the individual, the family and the community and coordinate their services with those of related groups”

To coincide with International Nurses Day, the ENhANCE consortium hosted a meeting at the University of Eastern Finland, based in Kuopio, aimed to prepare and plan the next important steps, involving the testing and delivery of a new postgraduate specialization (EQF7, master’s level) aimed at graduate nurses in the field of Family and Community Nursing (FCN) at 3 different higher educational institutes. Specifically, three ENhANCE partners will be piloting this European “reference” curriculum: The University of Eastern Finland (UEF), the University of Thessaly in Greece (UTH) and the University of Genoa in Italy (UNIGE).

Graduate nurses who take part in this postgraduate specialization will benefit from Moodle-based online teaching and learning methods. The ENhANCE European FCN curriculum plays a reference role, and has no legal standing. Instead, guidelines have been developed, to advise higher educational institutes how the ENhANCE European FCN curriculum can be enacted into localized curricula thereby, ensuring compliance with national procedures, regulations or other relevant contextual requirements.

The three pilots will derive their FCN course modules (i.e. the Units of Learning and corresponding learning outcomes) from the ENhANCE European Curriculum in Family and Community Nurse. The ENhANCE European curriculum is structured according to existing EU-level tools and standards such as EQF, EQAVET and ECVET. The ENhANCE FCN curriculum is based on international frameworks of the WHO and is composed of 7 Units of Learning and 54 learning outcomes.

The experience gathered in these 3 pilots, further consultation with external experts and other stakeholders in the field, will ensure that key considerations have been met before the final release of the European Curriculum and the supporting guidelines expected at the end of 2020, and thus allowing for a greater and broader uptake of the FCN ENhANCE Curriculum across Europe.

Click here to access the first version of the European Family and Community Nurse Curriculum

Click here to access the first version of the Guidelines for designing localized curriculas

[1] ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses (revised 2012) https://www.icn.ch/sites/default/files/inline-files/2012_ICN_Codeofethicsfornurses_%20eng.pdf