The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) has announced the winners of its new Nursing Innovation Grant Competition; Faith Nawagi of Uganda, and Stephanopoulos Osei of Ghana, both of whom are trained nurses. This grant, made possible by the support of University of Calgary in Qatar (UCQ) – Qatar’s only Canadian nursing school – was introduced to support nurse-led research projects. Congratulating the winners on their success, Sultana Afdhal, CEO of WISH, said: “WISH champions empowering nurses to lead and actively contribute when it comes to the development of healthcare policies. It is unfortunate that nurses are underrepresented in research because we believe that, whilst their role and value encompasses more than frontline work, nurses’ close contact with patients puts them in an ideal position to identify and understand the gaps in current care delivery practices. It is therefore essential to support and encourage nurse-led research to create innovative solutions that address these gaps.” Each winner has been awarded $7,500 to help fund their research in the areas of creating guidelines for nurses’ management of COVID-19 patients and the implementation of nurse-led telerehabilitation services for stroke patients respectively. Faith Nawagi from Uganda Dr. Deborah White, Dean of UCQ said: “Encouraging nurses to engage in healthcare research is a necessity in the ever-changing healthcare industry. Nurse-led research has a significant influence on the current and future professional nursing practice resulting in improvements in nursing care health system processes. The grant has shone a spotlight on the incredible work that nurses do beyond the traditional frontline work. I am pleased to congratulate the winners for their outstanding research projects which have not only tackled challenges but have highlighted the leading role nurses play and must continue to play in bringing evidence to health care.” SEE ALSO:Business and money making tips in 2023 Nawagi, who is Chair of the Africa Regional Hub for Nursing Now Challenge in Uganda, will be leading a study that will establish the nursing care for COVID-19 inpatients and explore the experiences of the nurses who cared for them over the past two years in Uganda. “Receiving this grant marks the start of my contribution to evidence generation, regarding the role of nursing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. Uganda has made remarkable progress in tackling COVID-19 since 2020. Contracting the virus is largely characterized by long periods of hospitalization, which involves nursing care. However, there is hardly any literature on the care provided to COVID-19 patients by nurses, or the experiences of nurses themselves, particularly in low-income settings like Uganda and Africa at large,” Nawagi commented. Team from Ghana The findings from this study will guide the Ugandan Ministry of Health in developing guidelines for the nursing management of COVID-19 patients. A registered nurse in Ghana, Osei is leading on the project called Menewo that will offer nurse-led telerehabilitation support for patients recovering from strokes in Accra, Ghana. The aim of the six-month study is to assess the impact of nurse-led online neurorehabilitation support on the self-efficacy of patients with strokes. It also seeks to test the feasibility of tele-neurorehabilitation in Ghana and how nurses could take the lead role in this method of care.
