Charlotte D. Barry

Delegation Guided by School Nursing Values: Comprehensive Knowledge, Trust, and Empowerment.

As health care institutions in the United States respond to shrinking budgets and nursing shortages by increasing the use of unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP), school nursing practice is changing from providing direct care to supervising activities delegated to UAP. Therefore, delegation is a critical area of concern for school nurses. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore values guiding the delegation of health care tasks to UAP in school settings from the perspective of the school nurse. An inquiry focus group was conducted with 64 Florida school nurses. Values guiding delegation were comprehensive knowledge, trust, and empowerment. These values provided a framework for guiding the delegation process.

Development of a School Nursing Research Agenda in Florida: A Delphi Study.

Research is important to the image, visibility, and viability of school nursing. Each state school nursing association should evaluate member commitment to school nursing research based on their unique set of financial, educational, and organizational resources. A 3-round Delphi study was conducted in which Florida school nurses identified research priorities. The 10 priority research topics were (a) obesity/nutrition, (b) role of the school nurse, (c) legal/ethical issues, (d) emergencies, (e) health education, (f) absenteeism/attendance, (g) diabetes and insulin, (h) injuries, (i) health services, and (j) asthma. These topics form the state research agenda and will be used to guide the development of multisite school nursing studies.

Clarifying a vision for health literacy: A holistic school-based community approach

Health literacy has come to the forefront as an emerging health issue. Processes are needed to incorporate health literacy across community-wide settings. The purpose of this article is to describe the process used to assist community partners in a school health program in clarifying their vision of health literacy from which a more holistic approach to the care of school-aged children and the community was cocreated.

The usefulness of the community nursing practice model in grounding practice and research: narratives from the United States and Africa.

A community nursing practice (CNP) model is presented as the synthesis of a decade of experience of caring for persons and communities. Values form the basis of the model and provide the grounding for practice. Transcendent values of respect, caring, and wholeness are explicated in the actualizing values of primary health care: access, essentiality, empowerment, intersectoral collaboration, and community participation. Usefulness of the CNPM in providing a framework for community nursing practice at school-based community wellness centers in both the United States and Africa is described. Narratives of practice and research presented in the unique voice of three faculty members illuminate the model’s values and paradigmatic view of person, nursing, community, and environment. These narratives provide insight into how the CNPM has served as a heuristic in the design of creative responses to calls for nursing in community nursing practice, education, and research.

Caring for Individuals Displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma: The Lived Experience of Student Nurses

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore the experience of caring for individuals and families left homeless and then displaced in the aftermath of destructive hurricanes. The nursing situations, which are reflective stories from the practice of seven undergraduate nursing students, were interpreted to uncover the meaning of caring for others who have experienced disastrous situations. The interpreted findings are three thematic threads that cut across all the texts: building connections to others, appreciating the wholeness of persons, and learning the meaning of caring in nursing. The wholeness of this inquiry is presented using a metaphor to describe the fullness of lives lived, despite being left homeless and displaced by disastrous hurricanes.

Understanding homelessness using a simulated nursing experience.

Students have an opportunity to understand the full experience of being homeless using simulated community nursing situations with a high-fidelity simulator. The Community Nursing Practice Model provides a context for using this innovative teaching strategy to enable students to respond holistically to the needs of the homeless.

Building a Caring-Based Hyperglycemic Crisis Prevention Model for Patients With Diabetes Mellitus, Thailand

The purpose of this study was to understand patient experiences of hyperglycemic crisis (HC) and develop a caring-based, interdisciplinary model for preventing HC in Thailand. A 2-Phase approach was used. In Phase 1, qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 in-patients with diabetes mellitus who had experienced a HC. Four themes emerged: not knowing, depending on others for care, experiencing stress, and seeking help for self-care. In Phase 2, interdisciplinary, participatory team focus groups were conducted using data from Phase 1 to develop a model of hyperglycemic crisis prevention.

Town & Gown: Building Successful University-Community Partnerships

Innovative approaches for building “town and gown” relationships between practicing school nurses, community partners, and universities/colleges are presented through exemplars relating to research, education, policy, and practice. The exemplars demonstrate the critical factors of successful partnerships as validated by their outcomes.

The Lived Experience of Teaching and Learning From Nursing Situations: A Phenomenological Study

This study offers insight into an innovative approach to teaching and learning nursing through the use of nursing situations. A Heideggerian, hermeneutic phenomenological study of the lived experience of teaching and learning from nursing situations was conducted with 10 participants, all of whom had taught in a caring-based curriculum and had experience teaching from nursing situations. The data revealed 3 relational themes: Focusing on the Discipline of Nursing, Moving Away From the Way We Were Taught, and Trusting the Process. A constitutive pattern emerged, Learning to Dance, expressing the alternating rhythms of teacher and student.

Caring for Students in School Using a Community Nursing Practice Model

Nursing theories are needed to illuminate the complexity of caring for students in school settings within the broad context of connections to families and community. This article describes the application of a community practice nursing model to school nursing. The application, embedded within a nursing situation, demonstrates an environment in which school nursing is practiced from the transcendent values of respect, caring, and wholeness.