A Poverty Simulation's Impact on Nursing and Social Work Students' Attitudes Towards Poverty and Health.

BACKGROUND: Currently, about 40 million people in the United States live in poverty, one of the most significant social determinants of health. Nurses and social workers must understand the effect of living in poverty on their clients' health and quality of life. PURPOSE: Nurses and social workers will encounter persons living in poverty. Therefore, beginning in their undergraduate education, health professions students must be aware of their attitudes towards poverty and how poverty affects health. METHODS: The Community Action Poverty Simulation was conducted with nursing and social work students at a small liberal arts institution. The Attitudes toward Poverty-Short Form (ATP-SF) and Beliefs Related to Poverty and Health (BRPH) tools were used pre- and postsimulation to assess students' attitudes about poverty and beliefs about the relationship between poverty and health. An emotional response plan was created to address participants' emotional responses by providing a separate space on-site and information about future resources. RESULTS: The ATP-SF showed a significant overall difference (p < .001) between pre- and postsimulation surveys, indicating a shift toward a structural explanation of poverty; the BRPH showed that participants believed poverty is the result of illness and inability to work (p < .01). CONCLUSION: This study supports poverty simulation use to promote awareness of attitudes towards those living in poverty and how poverty impacts health. Recommendations include using more community resource volunteers with first-hand poverty experience, allowing students to role-play adults or older teens in the simulation, and including other health professions students.

Guide to Implementing a Student- and Faculty-Led Interprofessional Poverty Simulation.

Abundant evidence supports the benefits of simulated learning. Simulations enhance students' communication and teamwork skills and expose students to situations they may not experience in clinical rotations. More specifically, research has confirmed the benefit of conducting poverty simulations with nursing and social work students from financially privileged backgrounds; these students demonstrated an enhanced structural understanding of poverty over a behavioral understanding, following simulated experiences (Noone, Sideras, Gubrud-Howe, Voss, & Mathews, 2012). This article describes the process of planning and implementing a poverty simulation.

Integrating Spiritual Care During Interprofessional Simulation for Baccalaureate Nursing Students.

Interprofessional educational experiences for baccalaureate nursing students are essential to prepare them for interprofessional communication and collaborative interprofessional teamwork. The aim of this descriptive qualitative study was to understand the experience of baccalaureate nursing students utilizing the hospital chaplain while caring for a suicidal patient in the emergency department during simulation. The need for interprofessional education is documented in the literature, but there are very few comprehensive, successful projects integrating spiritual care for nurse educators to use as models. This project can serve as a model of a successful interprofessional education initiative involving preprofessional nursing students and chaplain services. Overall, nursing students found the learning experience to be beneficial in preparation for professional practice on a collaborative interprofessional health care team.

Improving Collaboration Among Social Work and Nursing Students Through Interprofessional Simulation.

This project implemented first-time simulation with nursing and social work students. Students participated in a contextual learning experience through a patient simulation of interprofessional practice as a health care team member and reflection through debriefing and open response comments. Simulation offers a means to practice interprofessional collaboration prior to entering practice. Participants reported an increased understanding of the scope of practice of other team members through their reflections following simulation. In addition, participants reported increased comprehension of team dynamics and their relationship to improved patient care. Overall, the simulation encouraged development of the skills necessary to function as part of a collaborative, interprofessional team.

Parental Consent for Adolescent Research.

The purpose of this article is to increase understanding about how to obtain institutional review board approval to waive parental consent for adolescent research that involves minimal risk to subjects and/or that cannot be carried out practicably without the waiver. Because of IRB guidelines, the researchers were unable to use passive parental consent for a study of adolescent nonmedical prescription drug use (NMPDU). Without knowledge of waiver 45 C.F.R. §46.116 of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Code of Federal Regulations regarding the protection of human research subjects, the study design required active parental consent for survey administration. This requirement limited study participation and increased costs. Using the waiver, the study design could have waived parental consent with adolescent assent. By increasing awareness of the 45 C.F.R. §46.116 waiver and its subparts, the researchers hope to inform future researchers about reducing barriers to future adolescent research. Lessons learned include how using the waiver may decrease research costs, reduce participant selection bias, increase participant response rate, and expand data available to contribute to critical, emerging adolescent health issues such as NMPDU.

Enhancing Clinical Reasoning Through Simulation Debriefing: A Multisite Study.

AIM: The aim of this research was to replicate Dreifuerst's 2012 findings of enhanced clinical reasoning scores using a structured debriefing: Debriefing for Meaningful Learning (DML). BACKGROUND: The direct effect of debriefing on clinical reasoning is not well studied. The nursing education literature supports debriefing as a reflective dialogue necessary to enhance clinical reasoning. METHOD: A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest, repeated measure research design was used to evaluate nursing students' clinical reasoning using the Health Sciences Reasoning Test (HSRT). RESULTS: The change in HSRT mean scores was determined to be significant for the intervention group at the .05 level and insignificant for the control group. The change in HSRT mean scores between the intervention and control groups was determined to be significant at the .10 level. CONCLUSION: Nursing students who had the DML debriefing scored significantly higher in their clinical reasoning than nursing students who had usual and customary debriefing.

Creating a healthy work environment for nursing faculty.

Nursing administrators and faculty have a professional and ethical responsibility to develop and maintain a caring and healthy work environment for nursing faculty. To recruit and retain quality nursing faculty in the current nursing faculty shortage, a healthy work environment is essential. This article focuses on nursing administrators' and nursing faculty members' role in promoting a healthy academic work environment. Strategies to develop and sustain this environment are discussed.