Nursing has always been the subject matter in the past and in the present. Perhaps nursing is one of the oldest professions and yet it is still pushing its way for its recognition. The global issue of shortage of nurses is eye opening for the extensive recruitment candidates to nursing lately.
In light to this matter, a webinar was conducted to advocate investment in nursing. The webinar was organised by the Nursing Division in conjunction with IMU 30th Anniversary and Nurses Day 2022 on 10 December 2022 to discuss professional investment in nursing education and practice. A total of 48 participants attended the webinar via Zoom link.
The webinar keynote was presented by Prof Hamidah (UTAR) on the topic of investment in nursing profession and whether it matters to nurses. Prof Hamidah elaborated on the impact in nursing investment from her vast working experience as nurse practitioner/academician. She summarised that the journey in nursing is nevertheless very rewarding and worth the investment in nursing education. It creates new nursing jobs as well as strengthen nursing leadership. There is almost no risk investing in nursing as the demands for nurses globally is enormous.
This was followed by a forum where three expert nurse panelists from academia (Dr Rekaya Anak Vincent Balang, Head of Department Nursing, UNIMAS), clinical practice (Irene Quah, Director Of Nursing, KL Wellness City) and nurse entrepreneurship (Jaya Ravendran, Chief Executive Officer, Age Care Sdn Bhd) also shared their experiences. Dr Rekaya strongly advocated empowering nurses’ investment on the basis of creating additional job roles such as CNS or CNP. In light to this, Irene enlightened nurses need to be knowledgeable to speak up and empower for changes. Jaya supported this by saying that investing in nursing has embarked her in nursing entrepreneurship, which gave many opportunities in the healthcare business. In a nutshell, all speakers addressed well the investment in nursing from their inbound and outbound experiences as a professional nurse.
| Feedback from Participants |
|---|
| Great. |
| Eye-opening session. |
| Excellent as I have gained additional knowledge from the forum. |
| Overall was good and interesting. |
| Very fruitful. |
| Very good info as it really related with the current issue nowadays |
| Excellent input from various perspectives. |
| Overall good and informative. |
| Well done. |
| A very good discussion and information sharing that focused on the contemporary issues in nursing, specifically in Malaysia. |
| I was able to fully comprehend many topics regarding nursing which I was not aware of. I find the topics they discussed quite interesting as they were able to not only talk about the benefits of investing in nursing but also talk about nursing entrepreneurship. |
| The workshop was really insightful and empowering. |
| I enjoyed and benefitted a lot from this workshop. Looking forward to more workshops like this in the future! |
| There were informative views from the speakers. |
| Overall good |
| I have learned a lot from all the presenters about how to invest in nursing and how to become an empowered nurse. It made me realise and evaluate myself on how I performed during my clinical practice at the hospital and on the nursing skills that I need to improve on. I liked the way Irene Quah emphasised about communication skills and about continuous learning. Overall, I loved this workshop, quality wise is excellent and looking forward to joining this type of nursing event in the future |
| Good workshop |
Written by A/Prof Jayah K Pubalan, Organising Chairperson
