By Eugenia Trigoso Arjona & Julia Ruíz Pato
HSCT activity has grown substantially over the past two decades in high-income countries and lower-income and middle-income countries. Nursing staff are essential in a high specialty field like HSCT where patient care is so crucial: nurses are at the patient’s bedside 24 h a day and have a vital role in monitoring the patient, preventing and managing complications, and educating the family and helping them to understand the disease and the plan of treatment. However, in LMICs, there is a number of challenges nurses have to face: inadequate staffing levels, lack of support, limited access to education, and unsafe practice environments. Having that in mind, in 2016, the EBMT Nurses Group created a new, cross-sectional committee, the Global Educational Committee (GEC), involving the EBMT Nurses Board and other committees of the Nurses Group. A key objective of the committee is to play an instrumental role in the organisation and coordination of HSCT nursing educational events and activities in LMICs, working in collaboration with like-minded entities in the field of haematology and HSCT to foster and strengthen the ability of local nurse leaders to develop and sustain educational networks creating a model that is eventually not solely dependent on EBMT but becomes part of the global community.
Working closely with nurses from LMICs is pivotal to be able to set up adequate training programmes and meet their requirements. Engaging the local nurses is essential as they are knowledgeable of the local culture, tradition, priorities, and resources and will provide their experience to lead the educational activities to success. Along with this key objective, is the need to empower nurses and develop networks that lead to support the establishment of BMT National Nurses Groups.
Educational programmes of the Global Educational Committee started in Moscow and since then several training programs have been held in China, India, Myanmar and more recently in Brazil. The EBMT GEC, in collaboration with LABMT and Latin American nurses, initiated activities to build the LABMT Nurses Group (made up of over 250 nurses from more than 13 countries)
Despite the pandemic, the EBMT Nurses Group through the GEC continues working with the same enthusiasm to achieve the development of nursing educational programmes in outreach countries. Our mission is to support education and development of nurses all over the world. Nurse training to improve and promote excellence in care and empowering nurses through establishing nurses’ groups and strengthening networking are essential to provide high-quality nursing care in LMICs and worldwide for every patient having a HSCT.
The EBMT Nurses Group recently published a paper in the Lancet Haematology about the Global Educational Committee’s activities: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhae/article/PIIS2352-3026(21)00133-2/fulltext