Clinical education partnership: a model for school district and college of nursing collaboration.

Collaboration between school districts and universities has potential to increase the level of health services available in schools while providing quality public health clinical nursing placements for universities. This article describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of the Clinical Education Partnership Model (CEPM), a dynamic framework that specifies four sets of factors necessary for high-quality clinical learning experiences for nursing students in school settings: essential school district structures, essential college of nursing curriculum and arrangements, the interface of the district and university within the community context, and program outcomes. The CEPM was piloted over three semesters with public health nursing students with positive evaluative feedback and shows evidence of sustainability. The CEPM provides a solid foundation for ongoing mutually beneficial collaborative relationships in which school nursing practice and school health are enhanced and academic programs are enriched.

A new perspective: a vulnerable population framework to guide research and practice for persons with traumatic brain injury.

Recovery from traumatic brain injury (TBI) can be a tumultuous lifelong and expensive process. Guided therapies for community integration within community systems are a focus of treating therapists around the world, yet there are no published discussions concerning the most fitting community context. We propose a theoretical approach for practice and research using Flaskerud and Winslow's conceptual model of vulnerable populations. Using the model constructs of health status, resource availability, and increased relative risk, we offer empirical support for proposed construct relationships applied to persons with traumatic brain injury. We then propose that interventions for health promotion, acute care, and rehabilitation or chronic disease management have a community focus, and we identify relevant goals for community-based practice and research.

Model test of the relationship between self-help-promoting nursing interventions and self-care and health status outcomes.

In this study of a nursing intervention outcomes model was tested. Path analysis techniques were used to examine predicted relationships between self-help-promoting interventions and patient outcomes of self-care practice and client morbidity at three times. A sample of 307 women receiving medical treatment for breast cancer provided data for the study. The average participant was White, middle-aged, married, educated, and in stage I or stage II disease. Findings support the hypothesized model linking these nursing interventions directly to self-care outcomes and self-care to client morbidity outcomes. Client factors of age, social network size, disease stage, receipt of chemotherapy, resourcefulness, and uncertainty significantly influenced predicted relationships. Examination of specific patterns of relationships for the sample revealed delayed behavioral responses to the interventions, variability in predictors of each outcome at the three measurement times and a more strongly predictive model when patient outcomes were considered within the context of client factors.

Utility of retrospective pretest ratings of patient satisfaction with health status.

Outcomes assessment is often difficult to accomplish in evaluation research studies in situations where the gathering of pretest data is impossible or prohibitively expensive. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the substitutability of retrospective pretest ratings for actual pretest ratings in indexing change in patient satisfaction with health status. The sample consisted of 251 women receiving medical treatment for breast cancer enrolled in the Self-Help Intervention Project (SHIP). ANOVA, ordinary least-squares regression, and pooled time-series regression analysis revealed that retrospective assessments were not significantly different from their prospective counterparts in means and variances and that they differed from current assessments taken at the same time (p<.01). In addition, prospective assessments emerged as a significant independent predictor of corresponding retrospective scores (p<.01), accounting for up to 30% of the recall scores. These findings have implications for inclusion of retrospective pre-post comparisons in outcomes evaluation research.