HEALTH experts from Huddersfield are bringing new skills to the rest of the world.

University of Huddersfield lecturers are playing a key role in the transformation of nursing in the Far East.

And their work will soon bear its first fruits at a graduation ceremony in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This will be followed by an exploratory visit to Cambodia to see what contribution Huddersfield’s health professional education experts can make there.

In the UK, nursing is becoming an all-graduate profession and with its long tradition of teaching nurses, the University of Huddersfield has been an important part of the process.

Now there are similar moves to upgrade the education and qualifications of nurses in Malaysia, and when Lincoln College in Kuala Lumpur sought an overseas partner who could provide top-up degrees, Huddersfield’s School of Human and Health Sciences was approached.

A new course was established at Lincoln College in which students who already have Malaysia’s nursing qualification study a sequence of modules taught by visiting University of Huddersfield lecturers.

On completion, they acquire an honours degree.

The course is taken part-time over two years, so the first cohort of Lincoln College students is about to graduate. Their awards will be bestowed at a special ceremony on March 25.

Meanwhile, there are now four further cohorts, of between 20 and 30 students each, working towards their degrees.

The Huddersfield lecturers who make regular visits to Malaysia are Nichola Barlow, Phil Holdich, Pamela Williams and Dr Rob Burton, who is also Head of International Business in the University’s School of Human and Health Sciences.

Dr Burton explained that the visiting lecturers cover areas such as research appraisal, teaching and learning applied to clinical practice, practice development, leadership and management, team working and the roles and responsibilities of a qualified nurse.

He said: “In Malaysia there is a wholesale movement towards educating nurses to degree level. It is similar to the process we have been through in this country.

“It is all about nurses being able to use evidence-based practice to be able to develop their clinical decision making and show leadership in their own profession and the wider health professions too.”

The connection with Lincoln College in Kuala Lumpur is the first overseas-delivered collaborative course conducted by the School of Human and Health Sciences.

Dr Burton said: “We are quite excited about the first graduate group and we are hoping that as the course becomes more established we will reap extra benefits when some of these students decide to come to Huddersfield for postgraduate courses and research.”