Building on their effort to continually raise the standards for clinical excellence and their commitment to become a network of excellence for nursing, the Trent/Fleming School of Nursing plans to shift a few of their focus areas, continue to build community partnerships and maintain their concentration on social justice in order to better prepare nursing grads for successful careers.

These priorities, outlined in the School’s new strategic plan for the next five years, are in response to the many pressures on nursing education including clinical placement shortages, preparing ready for practice nurses and changes in the entry-to-practice exams and registration for internationally educated nurses.

“We undertook a planning process in order to craft a focused strategic direction to guide our curriculum, collaborations, programming and faculty development,” said Dr. Kirsten Woodend, dean of the Trent-Fleming School of Nursing and president of the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing. “Our plan sets out a roadmap for where we want to take the nursing program and how we can continue to graduate nursing scholars who are prepared for real-world experiences.”

The changes in the strategy moving forward will build on the unique nature of the Trent/Fleming program which includes state-of-the-art clinical simulation facilities, a focus on social justice and political advocacy as well as an innovative curriculum with five key focus areas; Indigenous communities, mental health, rural health, aging and women’s health and gender.

One of the changes made was a shift away from environment as a strategic focus which has been replaced by mental health. “Upon looking at our curriculum we realized that mental health aligned more strongly with our current program,” said Professor Woodend.

Since the inception of the program, Indigenous health has been an important focus but in the new strategic plan this area of interest will grow starting with a change to orientation for all incoming students to include an introduction from the First People’s House of Learning, home of Indigenous student services and Indigenous campus and community initiatives at Trent University.

“It’s important that students know and understand the importance of this area of focus from the start of their study in the program,” said Dr. Woodend. “The focus areas we’ve outlined in the strategic plan all map back to our program’s emphasis on social justice which is all about having a critical perspective when looking at equity and access in the health care system.”

The planning process involved engagement with current and former students, practice and community partners as well as collaborators at Trent and its partner schools Fleming College and George Brown College.

Posted on Monday, July 13, 2015.