Specialist Nursing Hub

Project Rozana’s Palestinian-Israeli Specialist Nursing Hub initiative has been developed with Nurses in the Middle East to bridge nursing gaps in specialist fields. The training aims to provide the Palestinian people with the highest standards of diagnostic, clinical and community health services.

There has been extensive investment in building Palestinian medical facilities in recent years. However, there is a serious lack of human resources to operate these sites and a gap in expertise to carry out the required specialist training of medical personnel, particularly in the field of nursing.

Project Rozana, with US$2.4M in funding support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will address this gap by bringing together 500 nurses from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel. 

Starting in October 2022 and rolling out over 36 months, the initiative sees Project Rozana working with Nurses in the Middle East (NME) to implement a pioneering nursing program that brings together nurses and leaders of eight leading healthcare institutions (four Israeli and four  Palestinian) which together, serve the most populated urban centres on both sides of the conflict border. 

This vast ‘twinning’ program will form the basis of a nursing hub that will facilitate:

• peacebuilding seminars and workshops,
• specialty nursing training
• medical language training
• real time consultations
• ongoing case-sharing between the nurses
• joint research that will assess the ‘twinning model’ as a means of diplomacy and health system strengthening.

Mapping and Training

The project begins with a nursing skills gap analysis of each of the four Palestinian partner hospitals. This will be combined with a healthcare needs assessment of the communities served by the hospitals, allowing the identified gaps to be prioritised according to the communities’ needs.

A ‘train the trainer’ component will support sustainability by giving Palestinian graduates the capacity to train future cohorts of Palestinian nurses and leaders in speciality medical fields. 

Peacebuilding Through Health

Project Rozana will partner with the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) to deliver the peacebuilding component of the hub. This will take the form of three day  ‘Positive Peace’ workshops which are based on IEP’s work over the past twenty- years to develop new conceptual frameworks to define peacefulness; providing metrics for measuring peace; and promote a better understanding of the cultural, economic and political factors that create peace. 

Model for Success

The initiative is an expanded model of a successful 2022 pilot project “Advanced Nursing Training” that was funded through the generosity of Project Rozana supporters. The pilot saw Palestinian nurses from Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem - the premier Palestinian hospital offering oncology and nephrology services and treatment to patients from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - receive critically needed hospital-based training in specialty and sub-specialty fields  at  Hadassah Medical Center’s Nursing School. 

Partnering with USAID

This represents the first grant Project Rozana has received from the Partnership for Peace Fund which forms part of a US$250M investment by US Congress via the  Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA) to fund projects that facilitate Israeli-Palestinian engagement, cooperation and peacebuilding. The grants are being administered and deployed through USAID. 

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