Dr Rose Stenhouse has built up long-standing relationships developing and delivering nursing curricula with colleagues in Maribor. It has been a true exchange, which is set to continue. Image Staff exchange experience Destination: Maribor, Slovenia Year: Every year since 2015 (excluding 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic) Understanding nurse education in Slovenia I first visited Maribor, Slovenia in 2015 with my colleague Professor Pam Smith who knew the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Prof Majda Pajnkhar, through academic connections from some years previously. The faculty had an established nursing programme and was working hard to extend its connections with academics across Europe in ways that would support the development of mental health nursing education and their new PhD programme. As a mental health nurse in Nursing Studies here at Edinburgh Erasmus offered an exciting opportunity to gain an understanding of nurse education in Slovenia and of health services, and particularly mental health services in the local area. I am extremely lucky that the Erasmus funding has enabled me to visit the Faculty in Maribor every year since 2015 with the exception of 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic, and this means I have got to know the city like a second home. Rosie Stenhouse Moribor - like a second home Travel to Maribor is never direct and it is always a challenge to find a route that is cheap but where you don't end up touring half of Europe to get there. I have tried several routes but the most circuitous was definitely a very cheap ticket which took me from Edinburgh via Eindhoven and Bratislava to Zagreb from where I got a bus to Maribor. The most beautiful journey was the train from Vienna to Maribor through the beautiful Austrian countryside in the sunshine. On our first visit in 2015 Pam and I were treated to a visit to Bled for a ceremony on International Nurses' Day. Bled is a very beautiful town on a lakeside, with an island with a chapel on it in the middle of the lake. Everyone who visits Bled has to visit their bakery which is renowned for producing excellent cream cakes, and I can't quite remember why, but we ate ours outside despite the fact that it was freezing cold. The centre of Maribor is full of little narrow streets with pubs and places to eat readily available. My favourite place is a Bosnian restaurant called Bascarsija - Pam and I have eaten there every time we have visited and this year I introduced colleagues from Ireland to this place. It is quirky, with small rooms and as many tables as possible packed in. The decor is done in such a way as to make you feel that you are sitting in a courtyard, with vines and a washing line with shirts hanging across the main room for an authentic touch! If you are into people watching this is a great place as it is really busy with locals and there is always a great buzz about the place. The food is all Bosnian and they do fantastic, simple desserts - stuffed apples or prunes in red wine. The local Slovenian wine is always excellent. Developing curricula with colleagues in Maribor My main focus when in Maribor has been to understand the mental health services and settings and then to develop and teach two courses on the Masters programme in mental health nursing. One of the aspects of visiting the faculty is that staff are always incredibly generous with their time, taking me to visit mental health facilities, discussing the curriculum, demonstrating clinical skills approaches and spending time getting to know me and allowing me to get to know them. In developing curricula with colleagues in Maribor I have gained an understanding of the frameworks and processes within which they work when developing new courses, and this has made me reflect on how agile our processes are here in Edinburgh even if often they do not seem so. The process of teaching mental health nursing to nurses already working in mental health contexts meant I had to continually check out how the context of what I was teaching mapped to the mental health contexts in Maribor. The teaching was a huge learning process not only in terms of identifying convergences and divergences in our (mine and the students') experiences, but also in relation to teaching in English where education was usually in Slovenian and students were not always confident in English. Despite the end of the Erasmus programme, the relationships that I have developed with colleagues in the faculty have led to plans for collaborative research projects which I hope means that we will continue to work together. Rosie Stenhouse Reflecting, post-pandemic Interestingly, my recent visit in April 2023 made me reflect on many of our work processes, particularly post-pandemic. The faculty in Maribor is very much campus based, with most staff working on site. In meetings where information was needed from another colleague it was striking that instead of turning to email, they pick up the phone or pop in to ask a colleague along the corridor. This seems so obvious, but I became really aware that it is something we have lost (I have had to unplug my phone to have enough sockets for my laptop charger in the office and we are no longer all around on campus), yet the email traffic that this avoids would be such a bonus. It feels like an unexpected insight and it is something that I am certainly mulling over in terms of how we might reshape our own practices in the department. Current opportunities Find out more about all the staff opportunities available: Staff opportunities Read other staff stories Staff stories This article was published on 2024-06-24
