Nursing within the international community: a visionary experience

When nurses from other regions, hospitals, or nations gather together, they often experience the exhilaration of sharing ideas and finding common ground. Despite the sociocultural, political, and economic variations between the United States and South Africa, psychiatric/mental health nurses in both countries share similar practice issues and concerns. The article describes how a program that brought a South African chief professional nurse to a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts promoted kinship, scholarship, and improved client care cross-culturally.