Nita Muir

Published: 15 July 2011

Nita Muir

Biography

I am currently a principal lecturer at the University of Brighton. Prior to undertaking this academic post I was a district nurse team leader in an NHS trust in Surrey.

Having been a nurse for more than 20 years I have significant clinical acute experience gained from nursing in Birmingham, London and the USA, during which time I have worked in a range of clinical positions.

I thoroughly enjoy my current role as a nurse educator and believe that delivering good quality and supportive education to students and practitioners can make a difference to their own personal development and practice that subsequently has the potential to impact on the clinical landscape and patient care.

Global health

As an academic member of staff I have taught and led courses and modules on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in addition to developing my scholarly interests around global health, education theory and clinical decision making.

More recently I have been working on a couple of international projects with colleagues at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, and with the Minhang Community Health District of Shanghai. One of the successes of this work has been the development of a new post qualifying curriculum based in the nursing school in Lusaka. We secured a grant from the British Council to support this work and the new cohort of nurses will start this year - great news!

Finally, I am also enrolled on my professional Doctorate in Education and aim to complete this within the next few years.

Introduction to Congress

Being a member of the Education Forum committee is a new venture for me and something I am looking forward to embracing. I attended my first RCN Congress in 2011 and it was a great experience - I would encourage every member of the Education Forum to do the same.

I have always appreciated the role of the RCN, both nationally and internationally, as they have representation at the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and at a European level, but Congress really brought the members’ activity within the RCN alive to me.

I was able to contribute to a debate on safe staffing levels (Congress item number eight) and while we didn`t fully support the agenda item we were able to have a voice in contributing to the worthwhile debate.

I was not the only representative from Brighton at Congress. One of our Diploma in Nursing students is a member of the RCN Students Committee and she presented a really articulate resolution on quality placement. It was fantastic to see her do so and she has subsequently written about this in our students newsletter.