Teaching, Researches & Social Services

1.  Development of Teaching
Teaching is the key focus of Kiang Wu Nursing College of Macau (KWNC) and that occupies 70% of its work. Looking ahead, KWNC aims at moving towards both popularization and advancement on the foundation of its Bachelor’s Programme. It has been establishing the Master of Nursing Science Programme in collaboration with Sun Yat-sen University of Guangzhou since 2010 and is making headway to establish the programme independently. In terms of talent nurture, KWNC will continue laying emphasis on the nurture of professional nursing talents, while gradually fostering nursing personnel of various levels and professional areas by offering different health care and health promotion programmes and courses including clinical nursing, community nursing (focuses on chronic nursing, children and women health care), elderly nursing and childbearing nursing (midwifery) as well as clinical nursing (in English).
 
The major source of income of Macao derives from the tourism and gaming industry. A number of conditions including the proposal of positioning Macao as World Centre of Tourism and Leisure put forward by the Central Government in its Twelfth Five-Year Plan, gradual integration between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, development of the Traditional Chinese Medicine industrial park in Hengqin Island, and the rapidly ageing society bring in new development opportunities for the city’s health care sector. KWNC will address the needs of the tourism and gaming industry by strengthening the training in prevention and nursing techniques for communicable diseases and establishing cross-disciplinary programmes. Meanwhile, it will popularize and promote health care and first-aid knowledge, and foster health care talents of various levels and professional areas including elderly nursing, childbearing nursing, health maintenance, family nursing, travelling health, health insurance and advanced health care according to the College’s development as well as the needs of the local society.

2.  Development of Researches and Publications
In an effort to further enhance the College’s research quality, promote and manage academic publications and broaden the research directions, the establishment of the Research Management and Development Department is in the pipeline. The Department will take up the role to encourage and assist academic staff in initiating more high quality and influential cross-regional and cross-disciplinary academic researches for the facilitation of the ongoing advancement of Macao’s health care sector. In addition, KWNC will put continuous effort into the publication of “Macau Journal of Nursing” and transform it from a biannual journal into a quarterly (or bimonthly) journal within ten years time. With the gradual increase of high-calibre academic staff and students upon the inauguration of the new campus, KWNC will strive for a larger and more stable number of contributions by exerting more effort to publicize the Journal, inviting contributions from foreign experts and including feature articles. Moreover, in order to guarantee the quality and efficiency of the publication, more full-time editors will be appointed.
 
In addition to encouraging high quality researches, KWNC will continue strengthening the development of the Nursing & Health Education Research Centre (NHC) in the new campus, focusing primarily on elderly nursing and some other areas such as children, adolescent and adult health (including hospice care) based on the actual needs of society. NHC will be mainly responsible for studying the hot issues, policies and technical problems of the field to assist the Government with decision making, and offer technical and operational support to relevant institutions in terms of teaching and social services. It will also initiate regional and international exchanges and collaboration.
 
As an open-based institution integrating researches, teaching and services, NHC will not only undertake (organize/lead) researches of the field, but also assume the teaching responsibility of the relevant subjects by providing College students with space and equipment for practice and clinical study. NHC will be open to both students and the community, and encourage students to participate in its researches and social services as research assistants. Through establishing close connection with elderly service institutions in Macao, NHC will offer them relevant training, consultation and operational guidance. It will also provide health consultation services for individual citizens in need. Moreover, it will make every endeavour to convert its research findings into public wealth by working in collaboration with relevant enterprises. Through the above measures, KWNC aims at developing NHC into a local think tank and technological centre of elderly health services which could exert influence in the neighbouring regions and international world in the 10 to 15 years to come.

3.  Development of Social Services
Apart from fostering nursing professionals, KWNC attaches great importance to educating the community and the general public, spreading and popularizing health knowledge and enhancing the caring ability of carers. As a result, the provision of social services and health training is another key function of KWNC and which is currently undertaken by its Extra-Mural Studies Department (ESD). Based on the number of students (1,192) trained in Academic Year 2012/2013, ESD endeavours to continue organizing relevant short-term training courses according to the demand of society, government departments and institutions, and conveying the professional knowledge of nursing and health care to raise the overall health of all Macao citizens.
 
On the other hand, the Nursing & Health Education Research Centre (NHC) will maintain its key emphasis on the teaching, researches and social services of elderly health care, and persist in promoting the “Benevolence Lights up my Later Life: A Tailored Meta-programme to Face with Ageing Population in Macau”. With the view of building a preventive-oriented, active ageing and harmonious society, apart from strengthening the exploration of dementia, NHC will offer a number of services including chronic nursing, hospice care, health guidance, counselling, cognitive assessment as well as health information to the elderly. Moreover, it will gradually offer the above services to institutions, families and individuals according to the needs of society and citizens in the realization of the genuine integration of teaching, researches and social services. Furthermore, it will strive to turn KWNC into a health education base for Macao citizens and adolescents by launching various forms of health education.
 
4.   All-Round Enhancement of the Caring and Health Promotion Ability of Academic Staff and Students towards International Level
In response to the political, economic and social development needs of the Macao SAR as well as the policy direction of the Government, KWNC will put unremitting effort to nurture health promotion leaders needed by society, promote universal health and serve the general public by fostering the all-round caring and health promotion ability as well as the spirit of service of academic staff and students through its programme design, researches, activities of Students’ Union and Sub-clubs held within and outside the College.
 
Furthermore, KWNC will continue upholding the “Biliteracy and Trilingualism” teaching policy and actively encouraging students to pursue nursing studies in neighbouring regions, the Chinese Mainland and English speaking countries, through which students will be enabled to excel in their profession by maintaining a foothold in Macao, gaining support from the Motherland and marching towards the international world, as well as to bring back the valuable knowledge and advantage to the locality. Currently, KWNC offers a joint student exchange programme with Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine and has been referring students to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the University of Memphis of the United States to perform exchange studies.