The Chiang Mai University Faculty of Nursing has been a bastion of academic excellence for almost six decades. A pioneer from its founding, it is associated with quality education and leadership in nursing and has worked with UN organizations (UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF), the World Health Organization, and the Thai government to conduct trainings for health professionals from all over the world. In just sixty years, the Faculty of Nursing grew from an outpost nursing institution in Northern Thailand to an institute responsible for upgrading nursing education in the region and throughout the world.
One of the Faculty of Nursing’s most notable achievements include working with the China Medical Board to improve nursing education in China and the Mekong. The Program of Higher Nursing Education Development (POHNED) began in 1994 and focused on training master-level nursing educator to teach in China’s burgeoning baccalaureate nursing programs. Prior to this, nursing training programs in China largely consisted of 12-14 year-old graduates from junior school and these programs were largely run by physicians. Over a decade, the Faculty of Nursing trained 84 master-level educators and 9 doctoral level academics who then went on to become deans and hospital administrators and occupy top level positions in the Ministry of Health. China’s success in upgrading their nursing education system is largely due to alums from our Faculty of Nursing.
More than 10 years later, the Faculty of Nursing and the China Medical Board applied the success of the POHNED program in the Mekong region. The Strengthening Nursing Education in Three Southeast Asian Countries (SNESEA) program was created to address the shortfall of nurses in the region – namely Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam – and to increase the number of competent and qualified nursing faculty to teach in baccalaureate and master-level degree programs. This resulted in 29 masters-trained nurse educators who returned to their home countries to train the next generation of nurses.
The Faculty of Nursing has trained over 1000 health professionals from more than 70 countries through programs held in conjunction with UN organizations, the World Health Organization, the Thai government and other overseas governments.
The Faculty of Nursing is proud to do its part to improve nursing in the Asia region and throughout the world.
Join us and make your mark on the world.
Wipada Kunaviktikul, PhD, RN, FAAN
Professor and Dean, Faculty of Nursing
Chiang Mai University, Thailand