Main description:

This book is written for midwives, nurses and other healthcare workers at a postgraduate level. It also caters for students undertaking electives or gap year assignments in the developing world or low resourced countries. It provides practical, evidence-based guidance, using reflective practice and sharing lessons learned through experience. Although this book focuses primarily on the needs of the midwife and other health professionals working cross culturally, its lessons can be shared by professionals in other fields who provide cross-cultural technical assistance. It will be a useful reference for teachers of students undertaking electives and in supervising or teaching students from the developing world in a Western setting. The emphasis on achieving the Millennium Development Goals with the target date of 2015 provides added incentive now for professionals to share their skills cross culturally and there is every reason to believe that such exchange will be required and will continue for many decades to come.

Contents:

The chapters will largely be divided geographically, a thumbnail picture of the country or countries will present some background data, and then the text will be presented under the following headings: Exploring experience - this section will relate an autobiographical account of consultancy experience; examining the evidence - relevant research evidence will be examined in the light of the topics explored in the preceding section; reflecting on practice - personal reflections on the consultancy practice that has been explored will be shared; lessons learned and shared - lessons learned through the experience, evidence and reflective practice will be shared with the reader; some reflective exercises for the reader - these will be suggested to assist the reader in personal preparation for or development in international assignments.