Expanding the Mind-Body-Environment Connection to Enhance the Development of Cultural Humility

The unique health care needs of diverse individuals and communities are complex. To meet these needs, healthcare professionals are being called upon to alter traditional ways of thinking, perceiving, and acting in order to create more inclusive environments. Research shows that using mindsight, a process that increases both insight and empathy, can enhance an individual's mind-body-environment connection, increase self-awareness, and promote the development of cultural humility. This paper will discuss the current perspectives on the mind/body/environment connection from a Western lens that may impact the enactment of cultural humility for healthcare providers. Two evidence-based approaches, yoga and forest therapy, are recommended as effective intervention tools in fostering mindsight and cultural humility. Blending traditional cognitive learning with techniques anchored in the physical body may hold promise in supporting the development of mindsight and cultural humility in healthcare education and practice.

Nursing Students and the Human Body: Application of an Ethics Pilot Project

This manuscript offers findings from a pilot project which prepares nursing students for embodied professional practice through the lens of ethics. Four undergraduate nursing students were mentored by two nursing faculty in the Dundon-Berchtold Institute Faculty Fellowship Program in the Application of Ethics through an exploration on the ethics of embodiment using an arts pedagogy across one academic year. Inspired by the intersection of nature and health, this project explores the impact of an arts-integrated pedagogy on the human body. The findings from this project provide a natural first step for nursing students to consider multiple interpretations of the human body and to facilitate the students' development of an embodied ethical practice that is perceptive, empathic, and attuned to themselves as natural beings as well as diverse individuals and populations. The findings from this pilot project presents a pivotal opportunity to guide future nursing curricular development toward holistic, nature-inspired, and mindful-based interventions in order to increase resilience, decrease risk factors of compassion fatigue and burnout, and support nursing students to develop strength-based skills to use in their professional nursing practice.

Building Nursing and Midwifery Capacity Through Rwanda's Human Resources for Health Program

Global disparities in the quantity, distribution, and skills of health workers worldwide pose a threat to attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and deepens already existing global health inequities. Rwanda and other low-resource countries face a critical shortage of health professionals, particularly nurses and midwives. This article describes the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Program in Rwanda, a collaboration between the Ministry of Health of Rwanda and a U.S. consortium of academic institutions. The ultimate goal of the HRH Program is to strengthen health service delivery and to achieve health equity for the poor. The aim of this article is to highlight the HRH nursing and midwifery contributions to capacity building in academic and clinical educational programs throughout Rwanda. International academic partnerships need to align with the priorities of the host country, integrate the strengths of available resources, and encourage a collaborative environment of cultural humility and self-awareness for all participants.