INTERNATIONALIZATION OF POST-GRADUATE NURSING COURSES

Scientific production dissemination is consolidating unprecedented opportunities for a new perspective of access to professionals and researchers nowadays. Mutual learning, health public appreciation, and recognition of the need for changes in the ways knowledge are produced and disseminated have contributed to the qualification of scientific journals.

In a context whose scientific content produced by researchers in different parts of the world is immediately available to large portions of the academic population, places where information and knowledge necessary for clinical and community decision-making are expanding. The explosive increase not only in the total volume of information but also in ease of access implies to rethink the universities' role, particularly, the postgraduate programs.

The next generation of researchers, capable of extracting, synthesizing and applying knowledge, already requires research networks formation focused on scientific production quality. Such networks creation, linked to post-graduation programs, induce the Brazilian universities' internationalization.

Paradoxically, global movements of people, technologies, and knowledge have not been accompanied by equal commitment through public funding on new processes' circulation and products produced by scientists worldwide. Increasingly, the internationalization process of knowledge has been financed by researchers, with costs increasingly difficult to be supported by individuals or small research groups.

Higher Education Institutions, in particular, post-graduate programs, enable partnerships and, consequently, creation and expansion of international networks among several countries focused on improving academic production quality. Therefore, Nursing post-graduation internationalization has become a permanent challenge to promote, above all, a qualitative expansion of researchers' body, emphasizing the international mobility of professors and students, quality of scientific production, and social reality impact.¹ The possibility to obtain a doctoral degree in two institutions (co-supervision) or master's and doctorate co-orientations, agreements with foreign universities, and organization of itinerant international events are examples of actions in this direction.

Accordingly, the local experience occurred with creation and implementation of two major projects of the Post-Graduation Program in Nursing at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. The first one was the International Interinstitutional Masters development held in the city of Magallanes, in Punta Arenas, Chile, which began in March 2017.

The second one was the creation of the Laboratory of International Relations in Health and Nursing & Science and Technology, a joint initiative with the Undergraduate Nursing Course. Such projects and partnerships with universities and organizations from different parts of the world contribute to spreading a contemporary and dynamic institutional image prepared to interact with other peoples and cultures in pursuit of innovation and human development.

Publishing and dissemination of scientific production at the international level is also a challenging institutional approach. Components of a successful equation include reaching impact measures, denoting publications' quality and broadening the consumer public, readers and authors. The impact of journals, measured by indicators and global bibliometric indexes, expresses the scientific communication growing relevance. Indicators represent performance standards; however, caution is needed in their analysis since such measures are external to the Brazilian reality.²

Although there is no directly established relationship, the open access movement, together with the English language publication adoption, has favored the expansion of national borders and increased the Brazilian science visibility and relevance.

Finally, the internationalization requirements and graduate programs efforts to reach them are worthwhile, especially from the perspective of cultural, social, political and economic integration, training professionals capable of facing globalization and coping with differences between countries.

Jussara Gue Martini
Ph.D. in Nursing. Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Nursing (PEN) of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) Eliane Regina Pereira do Nascimento
Ph.D. in Nursing. Sub-coordinator of PEN/UFSC Selma Regina de Andrade
Ph.D. in Nursing. Editor-in-Chief of the Jornal Texto & Contexto Enfermagem

REFERÊNCIAS

• ¹
  Milena Y. Internationalization of graduate education in Brazil: rationale and mechanisms. Educ. Pesqui [Internet]. 2018 [cited 2018 Mar 03]; 44:e161579. Available form:: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1517-97022018000100303&lng=pt&nrm=iso
  » http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1517-97022018000100303&lng=pt&nrm=iso
• ²
  Nassi-Calò L. A miopia dos indicadores bibliométricos [Internet]. SciELO em Perspectiva, 2017 [cited 2018 Mar 28]. Available from: http://blog.scielo.org/blog/2017/06/01/a-miopia-dos-indicadores-bibliometricos/
  » http://blog.scielo.org/blog/2017/06/01/a-miopia-dos-indicadores-bibliometricos/

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  2018