Nursing Now Campaign for Primary School Students

The Nursing Now Campaign is a collaboration between two Government Ministries - the Nursing Directorate, Ministry for Health and the National School Support Services, Ministry for Education, Sport, Youth, Research and Innovation. The initiative aims to send positive messages to students from a young age about the importance of taking care of one’s health but also positive messages about careers in the healthcare sector, nursing in particular.

The activity takes around an hour and targets Year 5 students (8/9 years of age). Then students are exposed to a number of workshops where they gain insight about nursing as a career from an early age with the aim of helping students ease into adulthood by demonstrating the advantages and drawbacks of various careers, including nursing.

Activity 1: Introducing the role of the Nursing Profession and the different work contexts.

Activity 2: Three workshops follow where students move from one workshop to the other.

• Workshop 1: 112 Safety Ambulance: After discussing situations when one should or should not phone the emergency number for help, students are encouraged to work as a team and build the AMBULANCE using the ambulance structure, all pieces needed to build the ambulance and laminated photos of ambulance provided.
• Workshop 2: Organs of the Human Body: After a brief introduction on the human body giving examples of the functions of the organs, students are shown a picture of each organ, asked something about the function of the organ, encouraged to locate the position of the organ and attach it on the human body structure provided.
• Workshop 3: Basic First Aid: This workshop aims to demonstrate and teach simple first aid steps for common scenarios encountered especially at school or at home such as strains, twisted ankle, nose bleeds, burns. Three scenarios are discussed, namely nosebleeds, burns and scalds and asthma attacks. Students are helped to discuss if the scenarios presented are correct ways of behaving in that particular situation and the rationale behind, if they are not.

Activity 3: Puppet show & Hand Washing Song: The final activity starts off with a short drama activity depicting how one should wash one’s hands through the use of a puppets. Consequently, students are taught a song related to the theme, that of learning how to wash one’s hands.

An activity workbook about the role of the nurse is given to all pupils at the end of the activity whereby teachers can follow-up on the activity by doing class group work. This is the second year of this campaign. During this scholastic year (2022-2023) 15 schools will be reached.