TALENT Groups Spotlight: Leadership in Nursing & Midwifery

Leadership is an approach to ensure good governance by influencing individuals to achieve objectives, protecting others, and ensuring the highest quality of life by providing much-needed direction.

My journey into nursing/midwifery started 7 years ago when I decided to join this field. During high school I performance strongly and achieved a good science result. On top of that, I had a dream to become health professional.

Somaliland nurses/midwives are facing several challenges such as the profession being undermined, junior nurses being unable to take part in Continuous Professional Development, high workloads, inequitable and insufficient distribution of the health workforce, lack of conducive work environments, including low pay both in private and public hospitals, low morale, motivation and job satisfaction, lack of opportunities to enhance knowledge and skills and, lastly, weak management systems, policies and regulation.

The TALENT training model facilitates the creation of health professionals who have good leadership skills within their working environment. Training has been central to the programme and nurses/midwives have been given the chance to talk about their own leadership challenges, come up solution strategies and develop plans for future career development.

Moreover, as an early career Nurse, this project supported me to meet individuals who have more experience than me who I can learn from. This makes it easier for me to handle challenges I am facing, using my local language. This has improved my leadership skills, enhanced my communication skills and also given me the opportunity to work with Hargeisa University and contribute to their research.

The research project that I participated in was qualitative and aimed to collect data from all regions of Somaliland. I was recruited as a data collector and I have been collecting the data for 3 months. It was my first time that I have participated in research.

The virtual training I participated in supported me to develop my career and motivated me to start my Master’s degree in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights at Dalarna University in Sweden which is online.

I am grateful to all of the coordinators involved and other actors who supported me directly or indirectly to share my career development.