Nurse leaders from China check out health care technology with Lipscomb as host

As an outgrowth of Nashville’s and the Nashville Health Care Council’s economic development trips to China and South America, Lipscomb University is playing host to seven nurses and nurse administrators from China this week.

 

Wang Aiping, the vice president of China Medical University’s (CMU) Nursing Institute, along with other members of the nursing leadership team at the CMU Hospital No. 1, will be in Nashville Thursday and Friday to tour various local hospitals and learn about current health care technology.

 

Following the visit to Nashville, the group will head to Johns Hopkins University and the University of California at Los Angeles for similar visits.

 

The Nashville portion of the tour, coordinated by John Lowry, assistant dean for executive education at Lipscomb, will include tours of St. Thomas Hospital and Centennial Medical Center, allowing the nurses to observe nursing in intensive care and emergency units as well as to see the latest equipment in the industry, two areas that are of specific interest to the group, Lowry said.

 

“This visit replicates what we plan to do as part of our role as the Nashville Medical Trade Center (NMTC) education partner,” said Lowry, who has been working closely with the NMTC to develop future educational programming for the center. “This will be a customized learning experience. Rather than a pre-packaged education program, the Nashville tour will be specifically tailored to the interests of this group, with highlights of Nashville culture mixed in.”

 

On Thursday, the nurses will meet at Lipscomb with the general manager of the future NMTC and the president of the Nashville Health Care Council, along with the dean of Lipscomb’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. They will also visit Gresham Smith and Partners, a Nashville design and consulting firm specializing in architecture for the health care industry.

 

The trip was sparked through relationships Lowry made on the Nashville Health Care Council’s trade mission trip to South America last fall. When the request was received from China to send a group of nurses to observe the best nursing practices in hospitals around the world, Nashville was recommended as a stop and Lipscomb was recommended as host.

 

“This is exactly the type activity that both the health care trade missions and the NMTC are designed to encourage,” Lowry said. “This is just another proof of Nashville’s international reputation for being a leader in health care management.”