Jennifer L Bird

Continuous curriculum review in a Bachelor of Nursing program: preventing curriculum drift and improving quality

Higher education institutions have rigorous internal accreditation processes for new courses and typically require thorough course reviews every 5 years. Courses such as nursing must also be accredited by professional registration boards. However, in the years between initial accreditation and formal reaccreditation cycles, the risk of a widening gap between the accredited curriculum and the taught curriculum is real when there is no process to monitor the changes that individual unit assessors make to their subjects as they teach them. This curriculum drift may interfere with the intended development of graduate attributes and the taxonomic structure of assessment tasks across the course. This article describes the implementation of a formative continuous curriculum review process that prevents curriculum drift and enhances the quality of a bachelor of nursing curriculum.

General practitioners as educators in adolescent health: a training evaluation

BackgroundGeneral practitioners play an important role in the primary care of adolescents in both community and clinical settings. Yet studies show that GPs can lack confidence, skills and knowledge in adolescent health. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an innovative training intervention on medical participants’ knowledge and confidence as adolescent health educators in a school setting.Methods15 general practitioners, 12 general practice registrars and 18 medical students participated in an adolescent health education workshop followed by field experience in health education sessions in secondary schools. The mixed method design included a pre and post intervention survey and focus group interviews.ResultsMean scores on the Confidence to Teach scale increased significantly (3.34 ± 0.51 to 4.09 ± 0.33) (p < .001) as did confidence to communicate with adolescents (3.64 ± 0.48 to 4.19 ± 0.33) (p < .001). Mean knowledge scores increased significantly (7.00 ± 1.22 to 8.98 ± 1.11) (p < .001). Participants highlighted the value of learning about adolescent health issues and generic teaching skills especially lesson planning and design, practicing experiential teaching strategies and finding the ‘sweet spot’ when communicating with adolescents. Some participants reported that these skills would transfer to the practice setting.ConclusionAn applied training intervention that uses evidence-based, experiential teaching strategies and focuses on developing knowledge and practical teaching skills appropriate for the health education of adolescents can enhance knowledge and confidence to engage in community-based adolescent health education.