Community Engagement: Leveraging Resources to Improve Health Outcomes.

Improving the health of communities requires creating partnerships and leveraging partner resources. Engagement with key stakeholders or partners who engage in collaborative community needs assessments has been linked to improved community health outcomes. Understanding how to engage community stakeholders, identify mutual goals, and establish a shared vision can maximize resources to improve the community's health. We applied our experience to an existing model for community engagement and leveraging of resources to improve the community's health and translate the model to a community case.

Use of Simulation to Develop Teamwork Skills in Prelicensure Nursing Students: An Integrative Review.

BACKGROUND: While use of simulation to improve teamwork skills has been established in a variety of clinical settings, it is unclear how teamwork skills of nursing students are developed using simulation. PURPOSE: The purpose of this review was to synthesize literature on how simulation is used to teach teamwork skills to prelicensure nursing students. METHODS: The integrative review of the literature was conducted using the Whittemore and Knafl 5-stage methodology and the TeamSTEPPS framework. RESULTS: Twenty-one articles were included in the review. Each of the articles reviewed used a component of TeamSTEPPS. The most common TeamSTEPPS concept addressed in the simulations was communication followed by mutual support. CONCLUSION: While simulation appears to be an appropriate methodology to teach teamwork skills to prelicensure nursing students, it is evident that some of those skills are not being taught using the TeamSTEPPS framework.

Interprofessional objective structured teaching exercise (iOSTE) to train preceptors.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Interprofessional education (IPE) is important in the education of all health care students, yet limited IPE training has been provided to preceptors who train these students in the clinical setting. Simulation using the standardized student model has been used to train health care preceptors in medicine. To our knowledge, there are no reports utilizing interprofessional objective structured teaching exercises (iOSTE) to train pharmacy preceptors. The primary objectives of this pilot study were to evaluate the effects of iOSTE on the pharmacy preceptors' perceived importance of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) core competencies and confidence in precepting interprofessional students. Additionally, data were collected regarding pharmacy preceptors' prior experiences in simulation and debriefing. EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY AND SETTING: Preceptors (n=23) participated in an iOSTE and debriefed with trained standardized nursing and pharmacy students caring for a trained standardized asthma patient. FINDINGS: Pre- versus post-iOSTE survey data showed statistically significant improvements in all self-confidence related items, including the following abilities: precept students from different disciplines (p=0.004), facilitate a simulation activity (p=0.001), conduct the debriefing process (p<0.001), and discuss with students the IPE core competencies (p=0.001). Additionally, responses to post-iOSTE survey questions assessing the learning activity showed high ratings (median=5, interquartile range=4 to 5). Pharmacy preceptors increased their teaching ability and confidence level in communicating with students from other health care professions. SUMMARY: These findings indicate that iOSTE is a useful and well-received method for preceptor development.

Using a multidimensional approach to improve quality related to students' hand hygiene practice.

When faced with a hand hygiene compliance rate of 44% of nursing students in clinical courses, faculty took on the challenge of meeting the hospital's expectation of 90% compliance or greater. A multidimensional approach to improve students' hand hygiene compliance was used to implement interventions in the school's simulation center and to create supports in the clinical area. This approach showed positive, sustainable improvement.