Teaching spiritual care to nursing students:an integrated model.

Graduating nurses are required to know how to support patient spiritual well-being, yet there is scant literature about how spiritual care is taught in undergraduate programs. Typically spiritual content only is sporadically included; the authors recommend intergrating spiritual can thoughout the nursing curriculum. This article describes how one Christian nursing school integrates spiritual care content, supports student spiritual well-being throughout the program, and evaluates spiritual care instruction at graduation.

The development of a community and home-based chronic care management program for older adults.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this paper was to evaluate a chronic care management program piloted by a visiting nurses association. Desired outcomes were to increase nurses' knowledge of self-management of chronic conditions and improve patient self-efficacy and clinical measures. PROGRAM PLAN AND IMPLEMENTATION: The program provided educational development for nurses and piloted encounters with patients with chronic conditions targeting community health nurses for a chronic care professional (CCP) certification and invited 300 faith community nurses to an education program on chronic condition(s). Thirteen patients with chronic condition(s) were enrolled. Chronic care professional modules were used to increase nurses' knowledge and were measured by successful completion of a certification exam. Faith community nurses participated in an education program and completed a posttest to measure knowledge of content. Patient improvement in self-management was measured by pre- and postintervention self-efficacy scores and clinical measures. PROGRAM EVALUATION: Seventeen nurses successfully completed the exam, and 38 faith community nurses participated in the program and completed the posttest. Three patients showed improvement in self-efficacy scores and eight in clinical measures. CONCLUSIONS: The educational development of community nurses prepared them to provide effective encounters to improve self-efficacy and clinical outcomes for older adults with chronic conditions.

Develop student compassion through service-learning.

Compassion is the ability to be sympathetic along with the desire to remedy distress and offer help. The art and science of nursing speaks to the need of having compassion toward those nurses serve, especially when different from the nurse. This article examines the concept of service-learning as a teaching strategy and way of developing compassion in today's nursing students.

Students' perceptions of holistic nursing care.

AIM: This qualitative study aimed to investigate the trends and perceptions related to the provision of spiritual care for patients. BACKGROUND: Holistic nursing integrates the body, mind, and spirit into care. However, nursing students from a traditional program, an RN-BSN program, and a graduate nurse practitioner program voiced discomfort with providing such spiritual care. METHOD: The study was a retrospective review of a convenience sample of journal entries about specific questions of how and when three groups of students developed ideas and concepts about spirituality. RESULTS: Students embraced the idea of spirituality connected to their experiences. As students developed as registered nurses, their manner of including spirituality mirrored Benner's model. CONCLUSION: Additional education is needed for professional nurses concerning spirituality and the provision of spiritual care in a holistic manner.