I was surprised and delighted when I was notified I had won the QNIS academic award. I did not expect that the study I conducted in Indonesia would win this honour. Indonesia is facing a double burden because we are struggling not only to eradicate communicable diseases but also non-communicable diseases resulting from the increase of life expectancy and various socioeconomic factors. Therefore, community nurses are paramount in empowering the community to take part in disease prevention and health maintenance in order to minimise treatment costs and raise the quality of everyone’s lives. However, for community nurses to be able to provide better health services their efforts would certainly need to be supported by scientific evidence.
As a researcher I am interested in investigating various health phenomena within communities, and I expect that my study results will be utilised by community nurses to improve health services in Indonesia. I really enjoy conducting research in community, because I obtain wider views of people’s health behaviour and potentially gain the opportunity to become more involved in problem solving with vulnerable individuals, families and groups within communities. In addition, I also have the opportunity to meet and share information and experiences with other community nurses, who always give me insights and ideas about the real world.
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to pursue my PhD qualification, because it helped me to conduct research that has contributed new knowledge about Bali; especially for family care improvements, a setting that has become my current focus of interest. In addition, my study programme gave me the opportunity to meet brilliant community nurses from other countries through seminars and conferences, so I was able to acquire valuable knowledge for my research and services improvement.
This QNIS award is a great motivator for me to conduct more research related to health phenomena within various community settings in Indonesia. To build strong networking and collaboration with other professionals to improve community nursing research in Indonesia is a challenge that I look forward to meeting.
Ni Komang Ari Sawitri
QNIS Academic Award
The University of Edinburgh