Nurse Letter

THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG SCHOOL OF NURSING SCHOOL OF NURSING SCHOOL OF NURSING 15thAnniversary 15thAnniversary 15thAnniversary Apr 10 ISSUE 17 urse NLetter Head’s Message Prof Sophia SC Chan Our School of Nursing Professor and Head Our first batch of Bachelor of Nursing Full-time graduates at Faculty of Medicine Graduation and Prize Presentation Ceremony 1999 This is our 15th anniversary year and we are very excited to have the School of Nursing has been accepted, effective from 1 March come to this milestone. We look forward to 2010 being a year 2010. This is a memorable moment, worthy of celebration. of ongoing celebration as we acknowledge our achievements and anticipate some of the challenges lying ahead in the coming In making an application to change the title, we argued that such years. The major event to recognise this landmark will be an a change would reflect our growing reputation and status and our international Nursing Forum we are hosting in June with a grand accomplishments in undergraduate and postgraduate education, finale celebration in December. However, what is exciting us research and community engagement locally, regionally and very greatly indeed in this important year is our change of name! internationally. Our achievements have been recognised by the I am delighted to announce that our proposal to the University University and we are all overjoyed that our dream of becoming a to change our name from the Department of Nursing Studies to School has finally come true. There is no doubt that, since our small beginnings in 1995 with 42 students, we have grown substantially into a large and complex academic unit. We have major programme offerings, 44 teaching staff and 960 students enrolled in Bachelor of Nursing (full-time and part-time programmes), Master of Nursing, Doctor of Nursing, MPhil and PhD. We have also introduced a part time Bachelor program to enable enrolled nurses to upgrade their qualifications and have commenced an infection control stream into the Master of Nursing Course. We have managed this fast growth carefully, in a series of thorough and meticulously planned developments. Rapidly increasing student numbers, new programs, and new staff have all required that painstaking attention is given to every aspect of the expansion. Our Bachelor of Nursing Full-time graduates at Nursing Graduation Celebration 2009 THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG SCHOOL OF NURSING SCHOOL OF NURSING SCHOOL OF NURSING 15thAnniversary 15thAnniversary 15thAnniversary It is therefore opportune to reflect on the breadth and depth of our current achievements since our small beginnings just 15 years ago. All of our staff all highly committed teachers and four have been awarded esteemed Faculty Teaching Medals and two have been awarded prestigious University Outstanding Teaching Awards. We have achieved outstanding success with our problem based learning in classroom and clinical settings, and have developed some highly innovative simulations for teaching critical thinking Professor Sophia Chan, Head of the School, was awarded the Outstanding and clinical nursing skills. We have also developed a programme Teaching Award 2009 in E-health literacy. Each of these points to the vibrancy, creativity and industriousness of our teaching staff. Our research theme of Promoting the Health of Well and at Risk Our work in knowledge exchange and transfer has also been Populations, with its subthemes of Chronic Illness Prevention and notable. We provide Hospital Authority and Department of Care and Women and Child Health has enabled us to ensure that Health funded training courses for nurses on smoking cessation our research is clearly focused. This strategy has been extremely counselling, research methods and primary health care. We successful as in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise have been funded by the Tamasek Foundation of Singapore to (2006) we had a Research Index of over 90%, which was the develop a Train the Trainer project to build capacity and advance highest score among all Schools of Nursing in Hong Kong and nursing through training courses for nurse managers, nurse surpassed the University’s overall Institutional Score of 85.47%. educators and community nurses in Guangdong province. We We submitted substantially more internal and external grant are working with the China Medical Board on a consultancy aimed applications in 2008/9 than at developing doctoral education for in the years preceding and nurses in China to increase the number increased our success rate as of nursing faculty. We are undertaking well. Our research has been a capacity building project funded by published in highly ranked Cancer Research UK to advocate for international journals such as and implement smoking cessation American Journal of Health among health care professionals in Promotion, International Journal Beijing and Guangzhou. of Nursing Studies, Journal of Nursing Education, International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, Journal of Advanced Nursing, and Journal of Public Health. Our research findings have also been reported widely We rallied in support of the increase by the media. of the tobacco duty in 2009 We have been extremely productive in our community service activities. Since we established the Centre for Health Promotion in 2004, HKU-Temasek Foundation Training-of-Trainers we have been very effective Programme for Advancement of Nurses in Guangdong in promoting public health Province, China awareness through the action research we have undertaken, Additionally, we have established collaborative and through the preventive links through partnerships with major universities health education and health in the USA, Sweden, United Kingdom, People’s promotion services we offer. We We have a number of exciting student exchange public of China and Taiwan and have a number have been able to provide our programmes with universities across the globe. of exciting student exchange programmes with services to the general public universities across the globe. and to clients with specific health problems. Currently we are working on a Youth Quit-line service, a Women Against Tobacco We have exciting plans for the future and all the members of our Taskforce, Support and Advice for Abused Women and Children School feel invigorated and inspired to continue the work of what and a Health Literacy Program for Older Adults. is now developing into a mature School of Nursing. 2 Issue 17 April 2010 Feature Story Dr Vivian Ngai Research Assistant Professor Psychometric Properties of a Chinese Version of the Self-Control Schedule Transition to motherhood is a time to celebrate the arrival of Results a new member in the family. It is also a time of psychological The C-SCS demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s stress that poses critical adaptation challenges for new mothers alpha = 0.83) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.91). Factor analysis (Tulman & Fawcett, 2003). Although some women manage to revealed the presence of three factors supporting the conceptual integrate the developmental tasks of a mother and are satisfied dimension of the original instrument. Significant correlations with with their maternal roles, there are others whose ability to cope GSES (r = 0.48, p < 0.01), RSES (r = 0.41, p < 0.01) and EPDS (r = is undermined by the stressful demands of motherhood and -0.46, p < 0.01) demonstrated good construct validity. become depressed in the perinatal period. Perinatal depression is a worldwide health problem affecting between 8.5% and 19.2% of women across diverse countries and cultures (Gavin et Conclusions and Implications al., 2005). In Hong Kong, perinatal depression has been found to The C-SCS has satisfactory psychometric properties. It has the affect 8.3% of women during pregnancy and 13.5% of mothers potential to be used as a clinical and research instrument for in the first three months after delivery (Lee et al., 2001, 2004). measuring learned resourcefulness in the Chinese population. With an annual delivery rate of approximately 78,800 (Hong Health care professionals could use the C-SCS in the evaluation Kong Census & Statistic Department, 2008), it is estimated that of interventions designed to strengthen Chinese women’s 6,500 to 10,600 women suffer from perinatal depression every learned resourcefulness and promote maternal well-being year. The impact on the women can be long lasting and has during childbearing. serious consequences on the psychosocial development of the child (Luoma et al., 2001). Thus, strategies that facilitate Chinese women’s coping and promote their emotional well-being during this role transition period are essential. Learned resourcefulness is an important personal capacity that References might enable women to negotiate the demands of motherhood • Boonpongmanee, C., Zauszniewski, J. A., & Morris, D. L. (2003). and stay emotionally healthy in adapting to the maternal role. Resourcefulness and self-care in pregnant women with HIV. Western Learned resourcefulness refers to a repertoire of cognitive- Journal of Nursing Research, 25(1), 75–92. behavioral skills for the self-regulation of internal responses • Chang, H. J., Zauszniewski, J. A., Heinzer, M. M., Musil, C. M., & Tsai, W. that interfere with the execution of a target behavior, measured C. (2007). Adaptive functioning and depressive symptoms in school- by the Self-Control Schedule (SCS) (Rosenbaum, 1980). The aged children. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 60(5), 502–512. literature supports the notion that learned resourcefulness plays • Gavin, N. I., Gaynes, B. N., Lohr, K. N., Meltzer-Brody, S., Gartlehner, a significant role in promoting perinatal health and reducing G., & Swinson, T. (2005). Perinatal Depression: A systematic review perinatal depression (Boonpongmanee et al. 2003; Chang et al., of prevalence and incidence. Obstetrics & Gynecology. 106(5, Part 1), 2007). Thus, a reliable and valid Chinese version of the SCS (C-SCS) 1071–1083. is crucial for the development of interventions to strengthen • Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (2008).

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