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Advancing global health education in nursing: An insider’s journey of professional learning and leadership development
Author: Cynthia Mullens
Supervisors: Samuel Mann
4 February 2026
Mullens, C. (2025). Advancing global health education in nursing: An insider’s journey of professional learning and leadership development [Doctoral thesis, Otago Polytechnic]. Research Bank. https://doi.org/10.34074/thes.7281
Abstract
As a registered nurse with 25 years of experience in global health, I have learned that clinical expertise is only one component of effective practice. Global health work involves finding creative solutions in resource-limited settings while navigating complex cultural and organisational dynamics. As a nursing educator, I am positioned to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application in preparing future nurses for global health engagement. The integration of global health and International Service Learning (ISL) into undergraduate nursing curriculum presents significant challenges within constrained timeframes and dense academic requirements. While anecdotal approaches exist, there is limited documentation and understanding of systematic curriculum development and implementation in this area. Previous work has failed to address the practical framework needed to prepare nurses for the rapidly evolving landscape of global healthcare delivery, potentially compromising both community outcomes and professional development. In this Practitioner Thesis, I employ an autoethnographic approach to examine my development as a thought and practice leader in Global Health and ISL. Through action-based research, I document the adaptation and implementation of an educational model that bridges theoretical knowledge with practical application. I describe the innovative development of a virtual international service learning (vISL) programme connecting nursing students in Dunedin, New Zealand with a remote community in Vanuatu during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating how traditional educational models can be transformed to meet contemporary challenges. This study employs a flexible and iterative research design, guided by Michael Patton's Developmental Evaluation Framework (2015), to allow for ongoing refinement of methods. The research contributes to global health education by offering a variation to traditional ISL by creating accessible, cost-effective virtual engagement opportunities while maintaining meaningful community connections. The findings provide a foundation for future development of virtual global health education, offering both practical implementation strategies and theoretical contributions to the field of nursing education.
Keywords
global health, nursing, health education, autoethnography, developmental evaluation, nursing curriculum, Vanuatu
Licence
This thesis is publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
