Edinburgh Alumni Honoured at the Human Rights & Nursing Awards
Yusrita Zolkefli, lecturer in nursing and midwifery in the Institute of Health Sciences at the University of Brunei, Darussalam, has been awarded for her work promoting human rights.
The Human Rights and Nursing Awards honour and recognise nurses for their exceptional engagement with human rights work and activities. They put a spotlight on nurses whose work focuses on raising awareness of, and appreciation for, human rights.
Yusrita was put forward for the award by colleagues and friends for her exemplary initiatives in education and practice. She has encouraged and inspired her students and fellow nurses to embrace ethics and law as part of their nursing careers. She has worked hard to advance nursing practice and has played a big part in the advancement of the professional ethics curriculum in Brunei.
Yusrita got her BSc in Nursing at Cardiff University in 2007 and completed her MSc in Health Care Ethics at the University of Liverpool in 2008. Yusrita came back to education in 2017 when she studied for a PhD in Nursing at the University of Edinburgh.
"Those who nominated Yusrita for this award describe how she organised classes for students where she presents a controversial topic to the class, which has been chosen to stimulate debate on aspects of nursing ethics and its relationship to care and development. The topics range from confidentiality, informed consent, relationships, professional issues and anything that nurses may encounter in a working day." (Nursing Ethics, 2019)
Friends and colleagues say she has "an exceptional ability to promote human rights of patients regardless of their ethnicity, cultural differences or religious beliefs. Her creativity and innovation is energising, and she has been widely recognised as empowering nurses to take risks as well as situate themselves at the heart of tackling current ethical challenges in care."( Nursing Ethics, 2019)
This Award is an extraordinary gift for me, especially for someone coming from a small nation like Brunei. I dedicate this Award to all nurses in Brunei who continue to striveand provide better, more effective and more sensitive ethical care in their daily practice.
This Award is an opportunity for me to strengthen the platform in engaging with clinical nurses through hospital seminars where nurses can share their ethical stories and experiences. It is essential to haves tructures and processes in place to bring a meaningful reflection of ethical communication.
As a teacher, ethics education in nursing is equally important. I hope to be able to strengthen the critical foundation inaddressing ethical inquiry in nursing curricula through innovative methods for ethics pedagogy such asclass debate.
After accepting the award Yusrita visited Edinburgh and met up with her former PhD supervisors and other Nursing colleagues from the School of Health, "It has always been special and memorable every time I visit Edinburgh. Meeting with former supervisors, Professor Kenneth Boyd and Dr Colin Chandler was just the icing on a cake. They have been so supportive and inspiring throughout my PhD journey and for making me want to be a better person."
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‘Citations for the Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2019’ (2019) Nursing Ethics, 26(4), pp. 958–961. doi: 10.1177/0969733019846758.