Exchange Students’ Health Security in Africa

Abstract

Exchange programs have been popular among university students already for over 30 years. Through Erasmus+ program, over 90 000 exchange students were sent from Finland to all around the world. The Erasmus+ program supports cooperation between different uni-versities for students, teachers, and other staff mobilities. Nursing students have a lot of pos-itive experiences about their exchange periods for example from cultural, language and so-cial skills perspective. Benefits of the exchange periods are considered important as in per-sonal growth, context-sensitivity, and citizenship. Employers also give value to a nursing student who has been abroad. This thesis was implemented as a functional thesis as a request to Health Africa - network. The aim of the thesis was to improve knowledge of health security during the exchange study period for social- and health field students. The purpose of the thesis was to create a digital databank for the training of social- and health field students. The research question that the thesis addressed was: What aspects should social- and health field students con-sider before an exchange period? Inductive content analysis was the chosen research method. A total of 12 students participated in the Webropol survey with open questions. The data analysis resulted in the formulation of three upper category classes in total, which were physical health security, psychological health security, and social health security. These categories were used as topics when Moodle platform was created for future ex-change students. It is important to have needed information on the same platform and easily accessible. Furthermore, education is an important factor, especially from the point of view of health promotion and safety. This thesis provides help for future exchange students by offering updated information from the perspective of health security