Global and public health core competencies for nursing education: A systematic review of essential competencies

Abstract

Objectives: Nurses are learning and practicing in an increasingly global world. Both nursing schools and nursing students are seeking guidance as they integrate global health into their learning and teaching. This systematic review is intended to identify the most common global and public health core competencies found in the literature and better inform schools of nursing wishing to include global health content in their curricula.

Design: Systematic review.

Data sources: An online search of CINAHL and Medline databases, as well as, inclusion of pertinent gray literature was conducted for articles published before 2013.

Review methods: Relevant literature for global health (GH) and public and community health (PH/CH) competencies was reviewed to determine recommendations of both competencies using a combination of search terms. Studies must have addressed competencies as defined in the literature and must have been pertinent to GH or PH/CH. The databases were systematically searched and after reading the full content of the included studies, key concepts were extracted and synthesized.

Results and conclusion: Twenty-five studies were identified and resulted in a list of 14 global health core competencies. These competencies are applicable to a variety of health disciplines, but particularly can inform the efforts of nursing schools to integrate global health concepts into their curricula.

Keywords: Community health; Competencies; Global health; Medicine; Nursing; Public health.