Engaging nursing students and community partners in the development of decision cases.

Decision case method teaching uses open-ended cases to stimulate decision making and critical thinking skills in the classroom. The cases are taken from actual practice experience and are developed in great detail with the goal of engaging learners in the actual dilemma as encountered by the case protagonist. This method has proven effective in preparing students for actual practice in fields such as medicine, nursing, and social work, but one barrier to this pedagogical approach is the lack of available relevant cases. This article describes how senior nursing students partnered with community practitioners to develop cases and subsequently used the cases in teaching activities with their fellow students. Outcomes of the project supported such an approach as a valuable learning assignment and method for improving critical thinking abilities.

Using literature and the arts to teach nursing.

Faculty consistently build on the basic sciences of the pre-nursing curriculum to teach nursing content. They less frequently build on a literature and arts foundation. Both medical and nursing literature contain numerous, specific examples of how literature and arts can be used in courses. This paper provides a rationale for using literature and the arts to teach nursing, an overview of use and research findings from a review of the literature, and a table illustrating how faculty select teaching strategies incorporating literature and the arts.

An evidence-based practice primer for infusion nurses.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the process of using current, best evidence to guide nursing care and improve patient outcomes. This article discusses the differences between research and EBP, reviews the process of EBP, and applies EBP guidelines to central catheter infections, a clinical problem relevant to infusion nursing.