GUIDELINES FOR A PRIMARY CARE NURSING CURRICULUM IN THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA.
Contributors: Columbia University. Teachers College.
Published: 1985
Number of pages: 195
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Many countries, developed, developing, and under-developed are unable to provide sufficient services to maintain their people's optimum health and prevent and treat disease. The causes are many: too few trained personnel, inadequate funds to educate and pay needed personnel and provide adequate facilities, and a standard of living that is inadequate to promote optimum health.

The World Health Organization has been sufficiently concerned to form study groups, call conferences, and publish their findings. A system of primary health care to proivide equal access to all people by the year 2000 is a major goal.

Panama, the focus of this study, is a developing nation with many health needs and problems. It is also a country concerned with finding ways to raise the general standard of living, increase access to health care, promote optimum health for all, and prevent as well as treat illness.

This study examines Panama's health care needs and resources, and then suggests ways to increase access to health care through the use of nurses' skills as primary health care professionals. Such nurses could provide not only primary health care services but also teach and supervise indigenous personnel to provide some of the services. The study proposes guidelines for the development of a curriculum to prepare professional primary health care nurses. The guidelines integrate the primary health care philosophy as defined by the World Health Organization and accepted by the government of Panama, with the philosophy of the School of Nursing, University of Panama.

The study also includes a suggested model curriculum which would prepare a generalist nurse. Such a nurse would be able to carry out an expanded nursing role in the home, hospitals, schools, industry, and other community resources in urban and rural areas.

The model suggested curriculum also proposes a semester of concentration in a field selected by the student. Such field experience would be supervised and controlled by the university and considered a part of the undergraduate program. Further, the proposed model would provide students with a foundation for graduate study.

Nurses so prepared may well help the Republic of Panama reach the goal of access of health care for all by the year 2000.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-12, Section: B, page: 4182.

Thesis (ED.D.)--COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TEACHERS COLLEGE, 1985.

School code: 0055.