Evaluation of a multischool collaborative COVID-19 vaccination project

To describe experiences of student nurses and faculty who participated in COVID-19 vaccine delivery through a multischool collaboration. Cross-sectional survey. Student nurses and faculty members from five university schools and colleges of nursing who participated in one or more COVID-19 vaccination or education events in 2021. Surveys were designed for students and faculty to document process and outcome experiences associated with project participation. Surveys were administered through an online survey platform. Overall, 648 students and 68 faculty members participated in the project. The evaluation survey was completed by 115 students (18%) and 58 faculty members (85%). Students valued increasing their clinical skills and reported the experience influenced their perspectives on nursing, fueling their passion and informing future career choices. Students reported that it was personally important to contribute to the vaccination effort. Few students reported challenges in participating in the project. Faculty reported positive experiences including gaining knowledge about public health and their communities, fueling their passion for nursing education, feeling a deeper connection with students, and experiencing personal satisfaction from contributing to the pandemic response. This project resulted in meaningful student learning opportunities, enhanced capacity for the public health emergency response, and strengthened partnerships among nursing programs and between academia and public health community partners.     

The San Francisco Collaborative: An Evaluation of a Partnership Between Three Schools of Nursing and a Public Health Department

ABSTRACT Many factors are contributing to a decline in the number of nurses who opt to choose public health nursing as a career option. One factor is the lack of preceptors in public health, which has led to the placement of nursing students in nontraditional clinical settings. Thus, many nursing students are not exposed to public health nursing while still in school. Graduating students may not have a clear idea of what a public health nurse is or does. The purpose of the study was to describe a collaborative project between three schools of nursing aimed at increasing interest in public health nursing among undergraduate nursing students. The study method involved analysis of student, faculty, and staff feedback received after an orientation to public health nursing. Nursing students found the experience valuable. Participation in the collaborative project has increased clinical experiences for nursing students in public health, increased exposure of nursing students to public health nursing, and has led to opportunities for both students and faculty within an urban public health department.     

Globally Engaged Nursing Education with Local Immigrant Populations

This case study describes how a community health nursing practicum course was redesigned to increase undergraduate students' knowledge of and interactions with local immigrant populations. The goal of this tailored practicum is to develop students' sense of global engagement while remaining in the local community. The GENE framework is applied to course planning, delivery, and evaluation of the experience. The key components of the GENE framework are organizational mission/course goals, global health core content, program characteristics, learner characteristics, reflection, and transformational learning. The practicum design, learning objectives, and community partnership development served to create a co‐learning environment. Use of an experiential education philosophy allowed the practicum to evolve as students, faculty, agency staff, and community residents learned together over the practicum. Students developed a more complex understanding of health and social conditions of immigrant populations. They moved from a primarily mono‐ to an increasingly multicultural orientation. The GENE model was useful in offering a globally focused learning experience within a local community.     

Use of health fairs to develop public health nursing competencies

This paper describes a community-campus partnership for health education established through the effort of faculty, students, and the community. Health fairs designed to address issues of concern to a community agency were originally conducted with nursing students. This partnership between nursing and a community was expanded to include social work, physical therapy, and medical students. A shared learning experience was structured through the presentation of health fairs in collaboration with agencies in Burlington, Vermont. One goal of nursing education is to produce professionals who have the beginning competencies of public health nursing. Reflection on the process, relationships, and outcomes of the health fairs revealed that students attained these beginning competencies in all eight public health nursing competency domains. Combining community-campus partnerships and an interdisciplinary focus enabled nursing students to become more responsive to community needs and to learn to work collaboratively toward creating healthier communities, thus building skills required for public health nursing.     

Creating and sustaining an academic‐practice Partnership Engagement Model

Public health clinical educators and practicing public health nurses (PHNs) are experiencing challenges in creating meaningful clinical learning experiences for nursing students due to an increase in nursing programs and greater workload responsibilities for both nursing faculty and PHNs. The Henry Street Consortium (HSC), a collaborative group of PHNs and nursing faculty, conducted a project to identify best practices for public health nursing student clinical learning experiences. Project leaders surveyed HSC members about preferences for teaching‐learning strategies, facilitated development of resources and tools to guide learning, organized faculty/PHN pilot teams to test resources and tools with students, and evaluated the pilot team experiences through two focus groups. The analysis of the outcomes of the partnership engagement project led to the development of the Partnership Engagement Model (PEM), which may be used by nursing faculty and their public health practice partners to guide building relationships and sustainable partnerships for educating nursing students.     

Using an Academic‐Community Partnership Model and Blended Learning to Advance Community Health Nursing Pedagogy

This article describes a model of teaching community health nursing that evolved from a long‐term partnership with a community with limited existing health programs. The partnership supported RN–BSN students' integration in the community and resulted in reciprocal gains for faculty, students and community members. Community clients accessed public health services as a result of the partnership. A blended learning approach that combines face‐to‐face interactions, service learning and online activities was utilized to enhance students' learning. Following classroom sessions, students actively participated in community‐based educational process through comprehensive health needs assessments, planning and implementation of disease prevention and health promotion activities for community clients. Such active involvement in an underserved community deepened students' awareness of the fundamentals of community health practice. Students were challenged to view public health from a broader perspective while analyzing the impacts of social determinants of health on underserved populations. Through asynchronous online interactions, students synthesized classroom and community activities through critical thinking. This paper describes a model for teaching community health nursing that informs students' learning through blended learning, and meets the demands for community health nursing services delivery.     

Effectiveness of Community Health Worker/Nursing Student Teams as a Strategy for Public Health Nursing Education

ABSTRACT A unique program that partners community health workers with nursing students was developed in response to community‐based participatory research data and integrated into a public health practicum at a baccalaureate nursing program in West Michigan. The goal of the program is to promote the health of 3 underserved urban neighborhoods while educating nursing students in population health and public health nursing. The purpose of this paper is to describe program conception and implementation and discuss evaluation of educational outcomes as a public health learning experience.     

Using portfolios to evaluate achievement of population-based public health nursing competencies in baccalaureate nursing students

Public health nurses from 13 local public health agencies and nurse educators from five schools of nursing developed population-based public health nursing competencies for new graduates and novice public health nurses. Educators in one nursing program used a portfolio assignment to measure achievement of the competencies by traditional and RN to BSN students in a community health nursing course. Data were collected from surveys and focus groups to determine students' responses to the portfolio and their use of population-based public health nursing concepts. The assignment enhanced students' critical thinking skills; however, concerns about the structure and evaluation of the portfolio decreased student satisfaction. Recommendations are made for improving the portfolio format, increasing students' valuing of the portfolio, managing the tension between assessment and learning, and orienting clinical agency staff and nursing instructors.     

Development of a comprehensive infection control program for a short‐term shelter serving trafficked women

A shelter for trafficked women has unique infection control needs that require a comprehensive infection control plan, balancing the needs of infection prevention with respect for the vulnerable population served. Using a trauma‐informed model and evidence from infection control in other shelter settings, a group of senior baccalaureate students developed a program in a short‐term shelter for commercially sexually exploited individuals that included a written infection control manual, policies and procedures, and staff training. This partnership between academia and a nonprofit agency was an experiential service learning project in the domain of public health nursing, allowing students the opportunity to apply evidence toward a sustainable intervention for the agency.     

‘Anyone can have a mental illness’: A qualitative inquiry of pre‐registration nursing students’ experiences of traditional mental health clinical placements

Nurses play a crucial role in mental healthcare provision. Like many countries, Australian nursing students are educated in comprehensive pre‐registration programmes which include mental health clinical placements. Placements play a vital role in students’ education, providing the opportunity to engage with consumers and develop mental health nursing knowledge and skills. There is limited knowledge of student perspectives on traditional placements in contemporary recovery‐oriented mental health services. This interpretive qualitative inquiry aimed to explore nursing students’ experience of traditional mental health clinical placement and how it influenced their practice and their understandings of recovery from mental illness. Data were collected from focus groups with n = 31 nursing students in a large metropolitan public mental health service. Thematic analysis resulted in three themes of experience: humanizing people with mental illness; learning about recovery; and shifting perspectives on mental health nursing. Through a positive placement experience where they felt supported and included by staff, students came to see consumers as people rather than diagnoses, developed greater understanding of mental health nursing work and were more likely to consider mental health nursing as a career choice. Peer‐support workers were an important influence on students’ understandings of recovery and have a key role to play in educating students on placement. Students need to be prepared and supported by university and clinical staff to deal with vicarious trauma that may occur on placement. Mental health placements play a crucial role in attracting students into the field, and it is imperative they remain part of comprehensive pre‐registration education.     

Incorporating quality improvement concepts and practice into a community health nursing course

Community health nursing students learned to incorporate continuous quality improvement (CQI) methods in their community health clinical settings. With the help of faculty guides, the students, clinical faculty, and key personnel from the community site collaborated on improvement projects that contributed to the agency's ongoing mission. Successful implementation of the CQI principles improved clinical operations, as well as patient care. In addition, the projects contributed to improved student and faculty satisfaction with the overall community experience. Students completed the projects and their clinical rotation with a sense of making a genuine contribution to the agency, and faculty reflected that the students were more engaged and invested in the project outcomes.     

Education-service partnership to promote best practices in a latent tuberculosis infection program

The education-service partnership described addresses the challenges presented to local health departments and public health nurses in completing required latent tuberculosis (LTBI) follow-up in population groups. A service learning partnership between the local health department and a Midwestern university school of nursing resulted in the development of an LTBI follow-up program that completed contacts with 193 subjects. Populations served by the program included immigrants to the community and workers from several occupational settings. Outcome data from the project included recommendations for the management of the information database for local health department LTBI follow-up. Nursing students gained an appreciation for the complexities involved in TB surveillance, and improved their cultural competence in the interface with Latino, African, and East European immigrant populations. Students gained first-hand experience with the current health care system, which resulted in communication challenges between health care providers and economic barriers in compliance with the CDC protocol for LTBI follow-up. The program demonstrated a successful partnership between service and education with positive results for the LTBI clients and the local health department nurses.     

Development of Bilingual Tools to Assess Functional Health Patterns

TOPIC. The theory and process of developing bilingual assessment tools based on Gordon's 11 functional health patterns.
PURPOSE. To facilitate assessing the individual, family, and community in a student clinical practicum in a Spanish-speaking country.
SOURCES. Multiple family and community health promotion theories; translation theories, Gordon's Manual of Nursing Diagnosis (1982); translation/back-translation involving Ecuadorian faculty and students; student community assessments; faculty and staff workshops in Ecuador.
CONCLUSIONS. Bilingual, culturally sensitive health assessment tools facilitate history taking, establish nursing diagnoses and interventions, and promote mutual learning. These outcomes demonstrate potential application to other systems in the international nursing community.     

Use of nursing homes in Baccalaureate nursing education

Abstract Although the use of nursing homes in nursing education has been described in the published research, no current report exists outlining guidelines for faculty if they desire to use nursing homes for their undergraduate nursing courses. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify courses that are best taught in nursing homes and the approaches faculty can implement when using nursing homes for student experience. The use of nursing homes for the courses in fundamentals, leadership and management, research and community health is discussed. A step-by-step approach for faculty to initiate the use of nursing homes for undergraduate teaching is also provided. The nature of the faculty, the characteristics of nursing home settings and the characteristics within the community will affect students' learning experiences and effectiveness. Thus, it is important to consider nursing homes as appropriate for certain types of learning needs.     

Addressing the Community/Public Health Nursing Shortage through a Multifaceted Regional Approach

Despite increasing needs resulting from emerging societal and health care issues, the number of trained community/public health (C/PH) nurses in the United States is facing a precipitous decline. Numerous factors contribute to this shortage including an aging workforce, a poorly funded public health system, inconsistencies in C/PH nursing educational approaches and opportunities, and a shortage of sites for clinical training. Determined to address the C/PH nursing shortage in their region, a consortium of public health professionals, university deans and faculty, and state nursing leaders in southeastern Wisconsin came together to address these issues from three perspectives: (a) curricular analysis and redesign, (b) expansion of clinical placement opportunities, and (c) paid community/public health nursing internships for seniors in baccalaureate nursing programs. This article outlines briefly the activities undertaken related to curricular review and clinical placements, and then describes in detail the approach, challenges and results of the senior internship program. Together, these programs produced long‐lasting results including an unprecedented level of collaboration between academic institutions and public health nursing professionals, the expansion of both traditional and nontraditional clinical sites in the region, and a transformative learning experience for seventeen senior nursing students from five participating universities.     

二年制护理专业高职新生学习适应性现状及影响因素的研究

目的探讨二年制护理专业高职新生学习适应性现状及影响因素。方法采取整群抽样法对某医学院校2012级58名二年制护理专业高职新生采用《大学生学习适应性量表》进行问卷调查。结果本组二年制护理专业高职新生学习适应性总均分(3.382±0.496)分,其中学习动力维度得分高于学习行为维度。多元逐步回归分析显示,二年制护理专业高职新生的学习适应性与其专业满意度、家庭教育方式及自觉心理状况有关。结论二年制护理专业高职新生学习适应性整体上处于中等以上水平,学习适应性受多种因素的影响。护理教育者应充分考虑个人学生专业满意度、家庭教育方式及心理健康状况,有针对性地进行教育,促进其学习适应性的良好发展。     

Constructivism applied to psychiatric-mental health nursing: an alternative to supplement traditional clinical education

With the popularity of accelerated pre-licensure nursing programmes and the growth in nursing student enrolments, traditional clinical education continues to be a challenge to deliver. Nursing faculty members are required to develop and implement educational innovations that achieve effective learning outcomes, while using fewer resources. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the effectiveness of a constructivism-based learning project to achieve specific learning outcomes and to supplement approximately 30 clinical hours in a psychiatric-mental health nursing course. Students participated in a 10-week, multistage project that examined life histories, treatment resources, and evidence-based practice, as applied to a single individual with a mental illness. Students reported increased understanding of mental health and illness, developed personal relevance associated with the knowledge gained, and learned to problem solve with regard to nursing care of individuals diagnosed with mental illness. For many students, there also appeared to be a reduction in stigmatized attitudes towards mental illness. Constructivism-based learning is a promising alternative to supplement clinical hours, while effectively achieving learning outcomes. Future research is needed to further validate the use of this method for the learning of course content, as well as the reduction of stigma.     

Partnerships for learning population-based public health nursing: Web-delivered continuing education for public health nurse preceptors

Public health and other community health nurses frequently serve as preceptors to undergraduate student nurses learning population-based nursing in community/public health practicum courses. The extent of preparation and support for the preceptor role provided by schools of nursing is often limited. One strategy to address this problem is to provide targeted, Web-delivered continuing education (CE) to preceptors. A Web-delivered CE course entitled, "Partnerships for Learning Community Health Nursing," was created and pilot tested. Course content includes preceptor roles; assisting students in learning population-based public health nursing, critical thinking, and cultural competence; learning styles and teaching strategies; what to do in challenging situations; evaluation and feedback; and specific information about school policies, procedures, and course assignments. Precourse knowledge was assessed using a mailed survey. Postcourse knowledge and satisfaction were assessed using questions embedded in the course. Postsemester knowledge and satisfaction were evaluated through a postsemester survey. Knowledge gain was tested using repeated measures ANOVA and paired t tests. Thirteen preceptors participated in the pilot test. Repeated measures ANOVA indicated that knowledge gain occurred (multivariate F=55.603, df=2, error df=11, p<.0001). Participants increased knowledge from pretest to posttest (t=-10.25, p<.00001) and from pretest to end of the semester (t=-4.95, p<.0003). Knowledge decline from end of course to end of semester was not significant (t=1.94, p=.08). Participants reported satisfaction with the course. Web-delivered CE for community/public health nurse preceptors can support preceptor learning and is an acceptable method for receiving this type of education. Further research is needed on the impact of preceptor education on student learning.     

A capstone teaching project for undergraduate nursing students: development of a visual teaching-learning tool

The purpose of this article is to describe an original teaching-learning capstone project designed to promote active learning by senior nursing students as they transition to professional practice. The centerpiece of the capstone experience is the creation of a three-dimensional educational tool called a Visual Project, which addresses the learning needs of patients, their families, or the nursing staff. Students create their project during the spring semester of their senior year, when they are paired with an experienced, baccalaureate-prepared nurse preceptor. Students present their projects to both the nursing unit in which they worked and the faculty and students of the nursing school. Students consistently express a sense of accomplishment when they present their projects and recognize that they themselves have undergone the same teaching-learning process that was the focus of their project.     

Peanuts,Popcorn, and Pediatrics: School-Based Carnival for Health Promotion

A carnival themed health fair was designed to enhance a pediatric clinical experience through service learning in an undergraduate Associate degree nursing program. The goal of this pilot was to foster pediatric health promotion by connecting nursing students with elementary students classified as a vulnerable population. Senior nursing students created, designed, and implemented an interactive learning activity for 225 children. Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory was the framework utilized for project organization and development. Nursing faculty guided students in identifying issues specific to contemporary pediatric health concepts, but creative and artistic control was given to the student. Students utilized a web-based learning platform to document the journey for the project from inception to informal evaluation. Students achieved pediatric course and program outcomes by working collaboratively with the community in an innovative format. This school-based carnival offers a valued contribution for collaborative connections utilizing innovation and creative methods.