Fostering Nursing Students' Growth in Patient Teaching and Empathy Toward Homeless People.

ABSTRACT: Helping nursing students explore personal perceptions toward the poor can support students' ability to care for impoverished people in their later nursing practice. A community-based mental health clinical site at a transitional housing complex for the homeless provided a meaningful experience for accelerated baccalaureate nursing students. Students offered basic health screening to the low-income residents and participated in a virtual health education question-and-answer meeting with former transitional housing residents. Through reflective journaling, students described how they gained empathy and new understanding of the needs of people living in poverty or unhoused, and developed confidence in patient teaching.

Changing Practice Through Meaningful Assignments: Ideas for Supporting RN-BSN Students.

Although nurses entering RN-BSN programs often perceive that earning the BSN will be of little benefit, upon completion, they do believe they have made professional gains, demonstrating that they have experienced a change in perspective. Mezirow's theory of perspective transformation can guide educators to develop learning activities that allow RN-BSN students to find meaning in the BSN degree while enrolled in a program, rather than after the program has been completed. Examples of learning activities and student reflections are provided.

RN-to-BSN Students' Quality Improvement Knowledge, Skills, Confidence, and Systems Thinking.

BACKGROUND: Little evidence demonstrates that RN-to-baccalaureate nursing (BSN) graduates have met The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice-specifically, evidence of the graduates' organizational and systems leadership related to quality care and patient safety. This BSN Essentials reflects the QSEN quality improvement (QI) competency. The purpose of this pilot study was to develop and test an assessment strategy to measure RN-to BSN students' QI competence and their perception of QI knowledge and skills. METHOD: Students (N = 59) from six RN-to-BSN programs participated in a Qualtrics survey e-mailed during the last semester of their program. RESULTS: The majority of students (60%) reported that they did not experience QI content in their program. Scores on QI knowledge, skills, and systems thinking were low, yet the students self-reported that they were confident in their ability to perform QI. CONCLUSION: This pilot study provides an assessment strategy to measure students' competence related to QI. Nursing education has an opportunity to integrate and measure QI competence to ensure that nurses have the knowledge and skills to continually improve patient care. [J Nurs Educ. 2017;56(12):737-740.].

Integrating Gerontology and Community Concepts Through Simulation.

This article describes an innovative simulation experience for nursing students. Faculty from a community health nursing course and a course in gerontology worked together to provide a comprehensive simulation experience that combined low-fidelity and high-fidelity experiences that provided an integrated learning experience and gave faculty with an opportunity to collaborate to improve outcomes. Student and faculty feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Future plans include incorporating a third didactic course, Leadership and Management, and working with other disciplines to demonstrate interprofessional collaboration.

An unlikely advocate: the role of the school nurse with children who have dyslexia.

School nurses are often the first line of advocacy for children when problems arise. One common learning disability, dyslexia, requires advocacy from the school nurse. However, due to lack of knowledge, misunderstandings, and misconceptions about the disorder, the school nurse may feel inadequate in an advocacy role. This article describes dyslexia, including warning signs, so that school nurses can be better prepared to assess for signs, provide intervention, and advocate for struggling children and families.

Outsiders in nursing education: cultural sensitivity in clinical education.

Cultural competence is a stated value of nursing and nursing education. However, some institutional and traditional practices in nursing education can unintentionally impede nurses from achieving cultural competence. Both the literature and interviews with nurse educators show that despite educators' intentions to treat all students the same, nontraditional students may feel singled out and may in fact be singled out for closer scrutiny because of their difference from the demographic norms of nursing students. To ensure that the nursing profession reflects the composition of the patient population it serves, nurse educators must first acknowledge the Eurocentric culture of nursing education and, then, work to change the environment in which students are recruited, learn, and take on the role of beginning practicing nurses.

To pass or to fail? Understanding the factors considered by faculty in the clinical evaluation of nursing students.

Making the decision to pass or to fail a nursing student is difficult for nurse educators, yet one that all educators face at some point in time. To make this decision, nurse educators draw from their past experiences and personal reflections on the situation. Using the qualitative method of critical incident technique, the authors asked educators to describe a time when they had to make a decision about whether to pass or fail a student in the clinical setting. The findings describe student and faculty factors important in clinical evaluation decisions, demonstrate the benefits of reflective practice to nurse educators, and support the utility of critical incident technique not only as research methodology, but also as a technique for reflective practice.

Successful and unsuccessful clinical nursing students.

This study describes the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful clinical performance in prelicensure nursing students. Clinical evaluation is an important role of nurse educators; however, many feel uncomfortable with its subjective nature, and commonly used criteria for successful and unsuccessful clinical performance are not available in the literature. Using a qualitative descriptive design, we analyzed telephone interviews with 24 nurse educators. Educators indicated successful students were positive and eager to learn, built relationships, communicated well, think critically, prepared for the clinical experience and showed progress, accepted feedback, and adapted to the clinical setting. Unsuccessful students were unprepared for the clinical experience, were unable to function in the clinical area, were unsafe, violated legal-ethical principles, and had difficulty with communication skills. Specific characteristics differentiated students who are considered satisfactory in the clinical area and those who are not. These behaviors may identify students at risk of failure in clinical courses.

Helping older adults find meaning and purpose through storytelling.

The purpose of this article is to describe a storytelling project that was designed to help community-dwelling older adults find meaning and purpose in their lives through reminiscing about the past. The storytelling project was successful not only for the older adults who participated but also for the nursing students, who were given an opportunity to learn about interviewing and communicating with older adults. The value of life review and storytelling as a nursing intervention became evident from this project. When time is taken to listen to the valuable stories and life lessons of the older population, nurses create a better understanding of their patients while their patients recall special memories and feel proud of their lives.