Deanna L. Reising

COMPARISON of Communication Outcomes in Traditional VERSUS Simulation Strategies in Nursing and Medical Students

Abstract The Institute of Medicine has called for more interprofessional collaboration between physicians and nurses. The purpose of this research was to compare the outcomes in affective and communication domains using a traditional (roundtable) model versus simulation in nursing and medical students. A prospective, descriptive survey design was used to collect data on 41 senior bachelor of science in nursing students, and 19 second‐year medical students. The simulation strategy resulted in statistically higher levels of stress as identified by participants. In addition, nearly all participants reported having a better sense of the clinical role, and with 55 percent of participants stating that the experience changed their view of the role of the clinical team. This initial study indicates that interprofessional communication may be enhanced using simulation.

Best Practices in Academic Mentoring: A Model for Excellence

Mentoring is important for the recruitment and retention of qualified nurse faculty, their ongoing career development, and leadership development. However, what are current best practices of mentoring? The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a model for excellence in establishing a formal mentoring program for academic nurse educators. Six themes for establishing a formal mentoring program are presented, highlighting best practices in mentoring as culled from experience and the literature. Themes reflect aims to achieve appropriately matched dyads, establish clear mentorship purpose and goals, solidify the dyad relationship, advocate for and guide the protégé, integrate the protégé into the academic culture, and mobilize institutional resources for mentoring support. Attending to the six themes will help mentors achieve important protégé outcomes, such as orientation to the educator role, integration into the academic community, development of teaching, scholarship, and service skills, as well as leadership development. The model is intended to be generalizable for faculty teaching in a variety of academic nursing institution types and sizes. Mentoring that integrates the six themes assists faculty members to better navigate the academic environment and more easily transition to new roles and responsibilities.

Using service-learning to develop health promotion and research skills in nursing students

Health promotion skills are a key component of most nursing education programs. While many curricula center around a singular health promotion project contained in one course, this nursing program saw the opportunity to use service-learning as a vehicle for developing a range of both health promotion and research skills. This report details a service-learning research program involving second and third year nursing students. Students conducted a community needs assessment, and designed, implemented, and evaluated health promotion programs that were developed as a result of the community needs assessment. Students collected data on the effectiveness of their programs through pre- and post-test design. Once in their statistics and research courses, students analyzed the data and prepared the data for presentation, developing their research skills. Results from the community on pre- and post-tests indicated significant gains in knowledge regarding hypertension and diabetes risk factors, prevention strategies, and intent to change behavior. Student outcome data was also collected and showed students perceived they had increases in the following skill sets: health promotion, assessment, civic engagement, and research.

Teaching advanced cardiac life support protocols: the effectiveness of static versus high-fidelity simulation.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of static simulation to high-fidelity simulation when teaching advanced cardiac life support guidelines. Using a quasi-experimental design, 49 BSN students were randomly assigned to 2 groups of either static or high-fidelity simulation. There were no significant differences between the static and high-fidelity simulation groups on the written examination. The high-fidelity simulation group outperformed the static simulation group on megacode performance.

Comprehensive practicum evaluation across a nursing program

With the inception of a new competency-based nursing curriculum, faculty in a baccalaureate nursing program developed a comprehensive laboratory and clinical evaluation program aimed at progressive, criterion-based evaluation across four semesters of the nursing program. This article provides background for the development of the program, the resources needed, and specific evaluation activities for the four semesters targeted. Course content and program year competencies, progressively built from one semester to the next, guided the design of the practicum evaluations. Faculty report satisfaction with the ability of this program to determine whether student performance is consistent with competency achievement. Refinements have been made to alleviate student stress and evaluator consistency.

Team-Based Learning for Nursing and Medical Students: Focus Group Results From an Interprofessional Education Project.

Past research indicates that inadequacies in health care delivery create substantial preventable quality issues that can be addressed through improving relationships among clinicians to decrease the negative effects on patient outcomes. The purpose of this article is to describe the implementation of an interprofessional education project with senior nursing and third-year medical students working in teams in a clinical setting. Results include data from focus groups conducted at the conclusion of the project.

Psychometric Testing of a Simulation Rubric for Measuring Interprofessional Communication

AIM The aim of this study was to establish psychometric testing of the Indiana University Simulation Integration Rubric (IUSIR), a tool for measuring interprofessional communication in simulations. BACKGROUND Educators engage in a wide variety of activities to promote interprofessional education, with many of these activities involving simulation. As interprofessional education evolves, tools are needed to measure the effectiveness of interventions. METHOD A sample of 229 pre‐licensure bachelor of science in nursing students and 66 pre‐licensure first‐ and second‐year medical students was evaluated using the IUSIR. Cronbachs alpha, inter‐item and inter‐total correlations, and interrater agreement were used to evaluate reliability of the tool. An ANOVA to test for difference between the two levels of students was used to establish validity. RESULTS Reliability and validity were supported for all individual items for nursing and medical students, and for all team items. CONCLUSION The IUSIR is a reliable and valid measure for interprofessional communication.

Nursing and medical students teaming up: Results of an interprofessional project

ABSTRACT Health professions programmes are increasing the number of interprofessional events in their curricula. Many of these programmes are grounded in case study or simulation events in order to prepare students for eventual practice. We designed an interprofessional education collaborative practice (IPECP) that provides direct interprofessional practice experience while students are still in their health profession programmes. In our programme, teams of senior baccalaureate nursing and third-year medical students provided health coaching to patients in need of chronic disease management. The purpose of the project and study was to determine whether repeated exposure to opportunities for interprofessional communication would lead to improvement in the individual and team communication skills. Teams met with their assigned patients monthly to provide coaching and had follow-up conversations with the patients between meetings. Faculty were present at each meeting to review the healthcare and coaching plans, observe the teams’ interactions, and provide a debriefing after each meeting. Results demonstrated that both individual and team communication skills significantly increased over time. The IPECP project was successful in providing a context where students could develop and improve upon key interprofessional communication skills.

Strategies for Success: Publishing Doctoral Work.

Part of faculty’s role is to support and encourage students to publish scholarly work that was either created during their doctoral studies or as the result of their culminating project. In an effort to facilitate a quicker launch to a postdoctoral career, an increasing number of doctoral nursing programs have added the publishable manuscript dissertation approach as an option to the traditional dissertation or have made publication of the Doctor of Nursing Practice project paper a requirement. Certainly, such stipulations can accelerate the sharing of cutting edge information and help to position graduates for their career as a scholar. However, with these stipulations also come responsibilities. One of the fi rst faculty responsibilities is to help students to determine the type of manuscript to be submitted. Manuscripts generated from doctoral fi nal products range from concept papers, integrative or systematic literature reviews, and reports of instrument development, to results of research or quality improvement projects. Nursing education journals benefi t from receiving manuscripts that refl ect the current syntheses of research, cutting edge research that advances nursing education research and inquiry, or evidence-informed changes to teaching and learning practices. Another faculty responsibility is recognizing that additional work may be required before the fi nal product is ready to be submitted to a journal and clearly conveying that message to students. Course and fi nal product requirements differ from publication requirements. Consequently, faculty need to prepare students for the changes required to transform a paper produced for academic credit to a publishable manuscript so that the experience is neither daunting nor defl ating. The following observations are provided as guidance to commonly submitted doctoral student manuscripts.

Student Perceptions of Clinical Instructor Characteristics Affecting Clinical Experiences

AIM The purpose of this study was to explore and describe students’ perceptions of clinical instructor characteristics that affect their clinical experiences. BACKGROUND Clinical instructors can have a profound impact on student clinical experiences, yet little is known about what clinical instructor characteristics promote and hinder quality clinical experiences from the student perspective. METHOD A multisite prospective, descriptive exploratory design was used. RESULTS Students ranked instructor knowledge and support as the highest desirable characteristics, followed by patience, creating challenges, enthusiasm, and organization. Emerging themes from the content analysis revealed that the ability of the instructor to convey knowledge, demonstrate professionalism, and exhibit enthusiasm and caring were key characteristics that influence the clinical experience. CONCLUSION Nurse educators can use the results of this study to target hiring and placing of desired characteristics of clinical instructors and to support mentoring programs that promote clinical teaching excellence.