Published: 7 October 2022
Last updated: 9 May 2025
The average nurse cares for 100 patients a year. In a 40-year career that’s 4000 patients, not counting her family, friendship and community connections.
She – it is usually she – is highly respected, well-integrated in her community and has remarkable potential for positive impact.
Train 480 Israeli and Palestinian nurses together, teaching them peacebuilding as well as clinical skills, and you have the potential to touch hundreds of thousands of people with a greater understanding of co-existence and mutual wellbeing.
That’s the arithmetic of peace behind a new peacebuilding program for nurse training that has just received a $US2.35 million ($A3.63 million) grant from the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA) through USAID.
The Palestinian-Israeli Specialist Nursing Hub will train 16 cohorts of 30 Palestinian and Israeli nurses at eight hospitals on both sides of the border, providing them with both clinical training and specialist relationship and peacebuilding skills.
A twinning program will form the basis of a Peacebuilding and Professional Nursing Hub that facilitates peacebuilding seminars, collective activities, medical language training, and real-time consultations, and ongoing case-sharing between the nurses.
The three-year program will contribute to closing nursing gaps in the Palestinian health system. Palestinian and Israeli nurses will also conduct joint research and receive training to train other nurses in “Positive Peace” workshops.
