Open education resources to support the WHO nurse educator core competencies

This paper describes an innovative approach to tackling the shortage of qualified nurse educators, which is a major constraining factor or 'bottle-neck' to improve the global supply of nurses, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

The World Health Organization commissioned experts to develop Nurse Educator Core Competencies that describe expectations for this cadre of workers. In their deliberations, the WHO experts cited the challenges affecting the adoption of these competencies, particularly the lack of resources available for implementation. To address this specific challenge, a USA-based non-government organiization, Nurses International, has developed Open Education Resources (NI-OER) to support nurse educators with freely accessible curriculum materials and remote mentoring support.

This paper applies item analysis to consider how the NI-OER could assist higher education institutes and individual faculty members in meeting each of the WHO Nurse Educator Core Competencies.

The NI-OER is a good fit with six of the Nurse Educator Core Competencies and a partial fit with the other two.

Congruence with the WHO Nurse Educator Core Competencies is an important validity check for the NI-OER. The ultimate goal of the NI-OER is to promote sustainable development through intermediate goals related to supporting faculty as they prepare nurses for current and future service needs. Technological solutions like the NI-OER cannot solve all aspects of a complex problem like the global nursing shortage but are an important tool.

This resource has significant implications for nursing and health policy because it tackles several constraints to the global goal of increasing production and capacity of nurses. Combined with the organization's remote mentoring and communities of practice, the NI-OER appears to have the potential to support novice nurse educators with accessible, adaptable resources.