Adverse Childhood Experiences: Concept Mapping in the Bachelor of Science in Nursing Curriculum.

BACKGROUND: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have deleterious effects on health across the lifespan. Educating health professionals for ACEs awareness and prevention facilitates quality care. Literature documents concept mapping as an effective teaching strategy used in health professions to stimulate learning and foster students' critical thinking. However, ACEs curricular concept mapping remains unexplored. METHOD: Content analysis with manifest coding was used to identify key concepts based on faculty narratives and discussion notes about ACEs content. RESULTS: Major and minor themes emerged to support the ACEs Curricular Concept Map development with direct and indirect paths to culture of health and health equity. CONCLUSIONS: The ACEs Curricular Concept Map was developed to guide teaching ACEs knowledge in a Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. Future studies are needed to evaluate the impact of ACEs curricular concepts on nursing students' learning and graduates' ability to translate knowledge to practice ACEs awareness and prevention toward health equity for all. [J Nurs Educ. 2019;58(4):193-200.].

Integration of Adverse Childhood Experiences Across Nursing Curriculum.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) devastate the lives of children, families and the community. Nearly 35 million children in the United States (US) have experienced one or more types of childhood trauma and nearly a third of youth between ages 12 and 17 have experienced two or more traumatic events. Adverse childhood experiences place an economic toll in the U.S., costing between $5.8 billion and $12.6 billion annually. Child maltreatment costs $124 billion, conservatively. Health Professionals play a major role to prevent and effectively intervene in ACEs. To this end, building a nursing workforce with necessary ACEs knowledge is critical as nursing graduates can make a sustainable impact as they translate knowledge in practice to improve health and health outcomes for children, families and communities. This paper describes how a College of Nursing initiated a systematic integration of ACEs knowledge across BSN curriculum from designing an ACEs Curriculum Integration Model, engaging and enabling faculty in the integration process and how ACEs concepts and contents were integrated. Suggestions are made for ongoing work and evaluations of the effects of ACEs curriculum integration.