The Memory Quilt: Heart-and-Hands Learning for Palliative Care.

Nursing students' learning of adult and pediatric palliative care is a daunting experience. An effective initial teaching strategy using a Memory Quilt activity can improve nursing students' interpersonal and communication skills and help prepare them for end-of-life caring. These skills help students meet patient and family needs, as they transition to care settings.

Psychometric evaluation of the Clinical Skills Self-Efficacy Scale.

AIM: This study uses self-efficacy as a theoretical framework for clinical skills instruction. BACKGROUND: Questions remain regarding the mechanism through which instruction on clinical skills in simulated laboratory settings enables students to successfully incorporate these skills in a clinical setting. Research is needed to determine what type of simulated instruction motivates students to successfully transfer clinical skills learned in a simulated laboratory to patients in a clinical setting. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to psychometrically evaluate an instrument designed to measure clinical skills self-efficacy in nursing students. METHOD: The instrument was administered to 191 sophomore, junior, and senior-level nursing students. RESULTS: This study provides beginning evidence to support the psychometric properties of the investigator-developed Clinical Self-Efficacy Scales (CSES). CONCLUSION: Future research needs to focus on investigating the relationship between increased self-efficacy and the successful enactment of clinical skills.

Health care missions: changing the local landscape.

A nurse changed local healthcare access in a remote area by going to serve the Aymara people in Bolivia as a missionary after her retirement in the United States. Resources for exploring healthcare missions as a second career are offered.