1.1. Access to III study cycle in nursing in BIH

Provision of high-quality nursing services requires educated and competent nurses. This can be achieved by strengthening the BIH educational systems. Adjusting the formal education to the altered needs of the health care system is therefore of a crucial significance for improving the quality of the health care services, and by so for a positive influence on the efficiency of the health care systems of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Significant success has been achieved during Project Phase 1 focused on formal higher education of nurses at public faculties/study programs of nursing in BIH by:

• Reaching an agreement on defining the nurses' competences that are to be gained through higher education in order to be able to cope with the present and future health care needs and problems of the population, including an agreement on alternations of the curricula that are demanded by the adapted profiles of the competences: the curricula have been revised at 5 higher educational institutions, one of them being implemented from 2016/17; clinical skills catalogues were developed at a few nurse faculties; clinical skills laboratories have been equipped at all 8 public nurse faculties, while the nurses that run them have been trained to work in the clinical skills laboratories;

• Developing strategies for building the local teaching capacities of nurses through the higher education, which include concluding agreements on cooperation with foreign universities: the project supported nurses fulfilling defined criteria for PhD grants with in total 10 grants in the first round and 11 in the second round of grants awards;

One of the Project Component 3 activities in Phase 2 is still financial support for access to nurse PhD studies.

Component 3 is still focused on public nurse education in Project Phase 2, by:

• supporting the reform in secondary vocational nurse schools,
• further aligning nursing study programs with EU standards,
• building local nurse faculty teaching expertise by supporting access of graduate nurses to 2nd and 3rd study cycle,
• developing strategies to introduce specialized nurse training.

1.2. Significance of the academic development in nursing

Following the model of the EU countries, the education of nurses is being increased to a greater academic level in BH as well. Nurses are getting the opportunity of academic progress in their own country. Thought the first generations of masters and PhD's in nursing will be educated by doctors during the transitional period, after the completion of the Study Cycle I and II these Masters and PhD's in nursing should be selected for academic professions in future. Only when the nurses become lecturers at the nursing faculties we will have a system of education in line with the EU standards.

Support of the ProSes project in this part is very important. Nurses will have anopportunity and financial help from the project, in accordance with the criteria, to enroll for a PhD study, and by so meet the preconditions for being chosen for academic profession. 

Table 1  List of the public faculties in BIH with nursing PhD programs 

Table 2  Tuition fee of nursing PhD studies in BIH

REMARK:

Applicants can apply by sending a completed application form and required attachments to Foundation fami to the following
address: Fondacija fami, Višegradska 24, 71000 Sarajevo.

To download: Application for scholarship award for students of the third cycle of study - Form 1B PDF document.