The 9th International Nursing Student Forum 2018
Health Literacy: A Key to Sustainable Development                             Goals of Population Health

1. Backgrounds

Changes associated with technological development, economic growth, and globalization have brought upon an era of pluralistic society worldwide. Pluralistic societies imply the diversity of people, cultures, values, beliefs, and ways of lives. These variations may include differences in age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, physical and mental disability, political orientation, socio-economic status, and geographic location. Nevertheless, the abovementioned variations are not all but a few kinds of diversity.

For a homogenous society, “the old way of doing things” seems adequate to at least maintain the equilibrium between the occupants’ needs and what the society has to offer. When the society becomes more diverse as is happening worldwide, doing things the old ways will inevitably marginalize some groups of people, particularly those belonging to minority groups in the society. These, together with deteriorating environment, increasingly limited resources, changing lifestyles, and longstanding social and health disparities have placed challenges on every sector of the society especially healthcare services. Despite different backgrounds, every individual needs equity and quality of healthcare services from providers, especially from nurses, whose works are almost always involving close contacts with healthcare clients.

To adequately address health care needs resulting from these changes and variations, healthcare providers and health organizations may need to consider “population diversity” as a crucial aspect of services provided. The Faculty of Nursing, Khon Kaen University acknowledges the importance of cooperative learning and provision of nursing care for the diverse society, and proposes “humanistic nursing” as a vehicle to achieve excellence in nursing care for diverse population. Humanistic nursing care involves the commitment of the nurse to care for all clients, regardless of their cultural values, beliefs, customs, or practices. Nurses who are culturally competent provide care for their clients with caring, respond to physical-psychological-social-spiritual needs, and aim to promote human dignity.

The International Nursing Student Forum is organized again for the third time to provide a stage for knowledge exchange and dissemination among nursing students from various countries on the topic “Humanistic Nursing: Caring for Diverse Population.” It is expected that this forum will broaden nursing students’ perspectives in acknowledging and recognizing human diversity and providing contextually sensitive nursing care. Nursing students will also be able to form a network of creative learning to improve nursing knowledge and provide a better quality care for the global society.

2. Objectives:

  1. Provide a stage for exchanging nursing care knowledge, skills, experiences, and innovations in dealing with health needs resulting from population diversity in the global society.
  2. Enhance nursing students’ communication skills in exchanging healthcare experiences with participants from different cultures.
  3. Establish academically cooperative networks among nursing students.
  4. Promote nursing students’ internationalization.