Supervising culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) nursing students: A challenge for clinical educators.

This paper presents and discusses the challenges faced by a group of clinical educators in teaching and assessing nursing students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds in Australian English-speaking hospitals. A questionnaire was administered to eight university-appointed clinical educators external to the clinical venues in order to find out what issues they had experienced with CALD students and how they had responded to them. The educators' responses were contextualised with the perspectives of 19 CALD students who responded to a student questionnaire, and analysed using Yoder's (1996) framework of instructional responses to ethnically diverse students. It was found that the clinical educators encountered difficulties in responding to CALD students with an instructional response that was not patronising, assimilationist or demeaning for the students. The findings suggest that most educators would have benefitted from targeted support by the school of nursing to develop a pedagogically appropriate approach to interacting with CALD students. This study points to the need for continuing education in cross-cultural communication for nurses working in clinical education roles and provides ideas to this respect that build on CALD students' strengths and participants' suggestions.

The environment of inpatient healthcare delivery and its influence on the outcome of care.

AIM: This paper addresses issues arising in the literature regarding the environmental design of inpatient healthcare settings and their impact on care. BACKGROUND: Environmental design in healthcare settings is an important feature of the holistic delivery of healthcare. The environmental influence of the delivery of care is manifested by such things as lighting, proximity to bedside, technology, family involvement, and space. The need to respond rapidly in places such as emergency and intensive care can override space needs for family support. In some settings with aging buildings, the available space is no longer appropriate to the needs-for example, the need for privacy in emergency departments. Many aspects of care have changed over the last three decades and the environment of care appears not to have been adapted to contemporary healthcare requirements nor involved consumers in ascertaining environmental requirements. The issues found in the literature are addressed under five themes: the design of physical space, family needs, privacy considerations, the impact of technology, and patient safety. CONCLUSION: There is a need for greater input into the design of healthcare spaces from those who use them, to incorporate dignified and expedient care delivery in the care of the person and to meet the needs of family.Preferred Citation: O'Connor, M., O'Brien, A., Bloomer, M., Morphett, J., Peters, L., Hall, H., … Munro, I. (2012). The environment of inpatient healthcare delivery and its influence on the outcome of care. Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 6(1), 105-117.