The Network for Nursing in Child Health.

The Network for Nursing in Child Health was launched in 2006 building on earlier collaboration of a group of nurses in Latin America to study the needs for strengthening pediatric nursing curricula in the region. This Network is one of more than 10 specialty nursing networks being developed with support from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) as a mechanism for promoting collaboration and communication between nurses of different countries to improve nursing practice and health care. The initial goals of the Network for Nursing in Child Health are to share knowledge and experience related to child health nursing and to promote incorporation of guidelines related to the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) in nursing curricula. At this time, membership in the Network is open to all nurses interested in working toward the Network's objectives, although communications are in Spanish. This collaborative network demonstrates the power of nursing working in a concerted way to build on its strengths and increase the capacity of nurses and health care workers to address global health priorities related to children's health care.

Teaching of the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness strategy in undergraduate nursing programs.

OBJECTIVE: To describe and analyze the teaching of the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) strategy on Brazilian undergraduate nursing programs. METHOD: Integrating an international multicentric study, a cross-sectional online survey was conducted between May and October 2010 with 571 undergraduate nursing programs in Brazil RESULTS: Responses were received from 142 programs, 75% private and 25% public. 64% of them included the IMCI strategy in the theoretical content, and 50% of the programs included IMCI as part of the students' practical experience. The locations most used for practical teaching were primary health care units. The 'treatment' module was taught by the fewest number of programs, and few programs had access to the IMCI instructional manuals. All programs used exams for evaluation, and private institutions were more likely to include class participation as part of the evaluation. Teaching staff in public institutions were more likely to have received training in teaching IMCI. CONCLUSION: In spite of the relevance of the IMCI strategy in care of the child, its content is not addressed in all undergraduate programs in Brazil, and many programs do not have access to the IMCI teaching manuals and have not provide training in IMCI to their teaching staff.