Considerations for the Effective Integration of Virtual Simulation in the Undergraduate Nursing Curriculum.

ABSTRACT: Nursing education employs a cadre of strategies to address faculty shortages, increased student admissions, and the decreased availability of clinical sites. Virtual simulation provides an innovative way to provide a robust learning experience that can be used in conjunction with or in lieu of some portion of clinical experiences. The authors highlight how virtual simulation can be used and outline considerations for educators considering virtual simulation integration.

Big Bang Implementation of Electronic Health Records in a BSN Prelicensure Program for Documentation Competency.

Only ten percent of nursing schools in the US are currently using EHRs in their curriculum. This is seen to decrease students' effectiveness as new nurses. We began implementation of EHR use in Spring 2024 and have started collecting data as to the effectiveness of this process. This is a starting point using semester 1 junior (J1) students and we plan to have this process follow these students throughout all 4 semesters and assess them in their first year of practice to gain full understanding of the benefits.

Academic-Practice Partnerships, EHR in Nursing Curriculum, and the Value Equation.

Workforce well-being and associated factors such as burnout, depression and documentation burden, have been identified as the highest concerns to be addressed. In academia, the new essentials of nursing practice including domain 8 for informatics and healthcare technology have become a focus for curricular revisions/enhancements. Our study focused on technology skills by using the technology of an academic EHR to measure baselines and progression of EHR use, sense of confidence, documentation competency, and post-graduation employer-based performance assessment. We provide results of an ongoing 1.5-year study and overarching strategy for university-wide deployment and financing.

Patient Partnership Tools to Support Medication Safety in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Protocol for a Nonrandomized Stepped Wedge Clinical Trial.

BACKGROUND: Preventable harms from medications are significant threats to patient safety in community settings, especially among ambulatory older adults on multiple prescription medications. Patients may partner with primary care professionals by taking on active roles in decisions, learning the basics of medication self-management, and working with community resources. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to assess the impact of a set of patient partnership tools that redesign primary care encounters to encourage and empower patients to make more effective use of those encounters to improve medication safety. METHODS: The study is a nonrandomized, cross-sectional stepped wedge cluster-controlled trial with 1 private family medicine clinic and 2 public safety-net primary care clinics each composing their own cluster. There are 2 intervention sequences with 1 cluster per sequence and 1 control sequence with 1 cluster. Cross-sectional surveys will be taken immediately at the conclusion of visits to the clinics during 6 time periods of 6 weeks each, with a transition period of no data collection during intervention implementation. The number of visits to be surveyed will vary by period and cluster. We plan to recruit patients and professionals for surveys during 405 visits. In the experimental periods, visits will be conducted with two partnership tools and associated clinic process changes: (1) a 1-page visit preparation guide given to relevant patients by clinic staff before seeing the provider, with the intention to improve communication and shared decision-making, and (2) a library of short educational videos that clinic staff encourage patients to watch on medication safety. In the control periods, visits will be conducted with usual care. The primary outcome will be patients' self-efficacy in medication use. The secondary outcomes are medication-related issues such as duplicate therapies identified by primary care providers and assessment of collaborative work during visits. RESULTS: The study was funded in September 2019. Data collection started in April 2023 and ended in December 2023. Data was collected for 405 primary care encounters during that period. As of February 15, 2024, initial descriptive statistics were calculated. Full data analysis is expected to be completed and published in the summer of 2024. CONCLUSIONS: This study will assess the impact of patient partnership tools and associated process changes in primary care on medication use self-efficacy and medication-related issues. The study is powered to identify types of patients who may benefit most from patient engagement tools in primary care visits. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05880368; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05880368. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/57878.