CATHOLIC NURSING CENTER: AN INNOVATIVE STRATEGY TO SUPPORT EDUCATION

The Catholic Nursing Centre (CNC - Centro de Enfermagem da Católica) is an extension service of Institute of Health Sciences in Porto (IHS-Porto) of The Catholic University of Portugal.

Created in 2007 CNC collaborates directly with HIS-Porto, as an extension service, through the provision of services, support to teaching and research. The CNC depends on the director of IHS-Porto and is coordinated by a Chief Nurse with the collaboration of all the nursing faculty of the institution.

Objectives:
Presenting the CNC as an innovative teaching and research strategy; Describe the development of CNC; list the main results achieved.

Method:
The documents and other records of the period from 2007 to 2017 were analysed.

Discussion and main results:
The innovation of this extension service lies in how it organizes and expedites internal and external resources to match identified needs. Internally the CNC has at its disposal the human and scientific resources of IHS-Porto and actively collaborates in supporting teaching (providing clinical teaching places and collaborating in the development of students' competences) and research (the research is integrated by the CNC in all its activities and support is guaranteed to researchers who interact with the ongoing community intervention projects). Community intervention is different from that presented in other institutions because it is targeted at vulnerable groups or intervention areas such as young mothers, school communities, adults in a vulnerable conditions (eg, homeless) and the elderly, but also continually integrating the 3 strands above referred. In addition the CNC has the capacity to assess needs and provide nursing care at home, manage health care for the individual or family and also provide health advice.
Throughout the analysed period it emerged that the community intervention is the most developed valency of the CNC and has relied permanently on active projects. Twelve community intervention projects and sub-projects with 6142 activities and 70,481 participants covered were enrolled. At the same time as intervention projects were developed and maintained, the support to the teaching was also provided to undergraduate nursing students of IHS-Porto who carry out internships aiming diagnosis and intervention in the community. In the 10 years of activity, 1596 internships were developed in the CNC for undergraduate students in nursing.

Conclusion:
Through CNC innovative experience and support for teaching, students made contact with singular experiences in the community, facilitating the acquisition of the necessary competences, gave the student an entrepreneurial vision of the profession and opened horizons in the perspective of nurses' performance.