Globalization and Nursing Practice

• Cyberspace and virtual reality are novel forms of space, leading to innovations like tele-nursing and virtual hospitals.
• Nurses can guide these developments to promote health for everyone.

Social Context

• Social context offers valuable insight into a concept.
• Reducing health inequities is an ethical imperative due to social injustice, which is a widespread issue.
• Efforts to correct this injustice should address the context created by globalization.
• Globalization exposes economies and societies to influences beyond their borders, also impacting healthcare.
• Nightingale's legacy includes nursing praxis in the global community and advocating for truth.
• Modern nursing developed in Europe and North America in the mid-19th century and spread globally through warfare, colonialism, and missionary work.
• Early 20th-century nursing established itself as a profession, but globalization waned, and the world wars and the Cold War caused the profession to diversify, resulting in varied nursing education.

Underlying Anxiety

• Debates and conflicts about globalization will increasingly affect related processes.

Meaning

• One view is that globalization is the integration of markets, nations, and technologies, enabling individuals, corporations, and nations to connect globally, faster and cheaper than ever.
• Some scholars and activists view globalization as a deliberate project of economic liberalization that subjects states and individuals to market forces.

Interpretation

• Discussions of globalization often convey a sense of novelty.
• Skeptics argue that globalization is simply age-old capitalism on a global scale.

Evaluation

• The health impacts of globalization are both positive and negative, varying based on factors like location, sex, age, ethnicity, education, and socioeconomic status.
• Positive aspects include economic growth, technology dissemination, and increased life expectancy.
• Negative aspects include consumerism, fragmentation, a weaker labor market, a wider gap between rich and poor, socioeconomic inequalities, and political instability.
• Globalization leads to drug-resistant diseases, climate warming, and pollution, which pose challenges for nursing in promoting sustainable policies, integrating environmental considerations into practice, and educating about health.
• A critical issue in transnational nursing education is the absence of an international authority to monitor educational standards.
• There is a lack of internationally sanctioned mechanisms for comparing programs in different countries.
• Institutions need accreditation to attract students and promote quality education.

Practical Result

• Globalization affects personal and professional lives, changing how nations and communities operate.
• As globalization expands, nursing can benefit from its advantages.
• Nurses face unprecedented challenges in education and work due to today's complex and rapidly evolving society.
• Nurses should be able to understand local and global realities, be aware of population health profiles, work at different levels of healthcare complexity, demonstrate social responsibility, practice cultural competence, and build knowledge through education.
• Globalization of education continues through exchange programs, international research, offshore campuses, and increased international students.
• Conventional, context-specific curriculum development needs change.
• E-learning allows nursing students to access programs remotely, both locally and internationally.
• In the 21st century, collaborative efforts in nursing should focus on:
  • Forming scientists who can think critically to define and prioritize social needs.
  • Producing impactful knowledge that improves the well-being of individuals, families, and communities.
  • Building capacity in new theoretical and methodological approaches and training in advanced technologies.
  • Encouraging nursing leaders to proactively address opportunities and create mechanisms to integrate knowledge into public policies.

Choose the Language

• Globalization is controlled by humans and impacts all aspects of life.
• Nurses must value their own knowledge, culture, traditions, and healthcare practices, and be open to alternative nursing practices; act locally, think globally.

Conclusion

• Clear language about globalization is important in discussions and documentation among nurses and disciplines to achieve praxis.
• There are limited articles focusing on globalization in nursing.
• Concept analysis is a preliminary step, useful in nursing education or administration.
• More quantitative and qualitative research is needed to clarify its meaning and create a mid-range theory for practice.
• Nursing should keep pace with globalization and avoid being stuck in the past.
• Key is to manage globalization processes better, balancing winners and losers for long-term social and environmental sustainability.
• Nursing leaders urge nurses to engage in the global health dialogue to increase global awareness through education and research, and to apply their perspectives on health to policies and practices that influence global health.