Sharon Cannon

Developing and establishing online student learning communities.

Developing effective learning communities is an important component of Web-based courses. Learning communities offer a social context for learning that greatly enhances the knowledge acquisition of all involved parties. This article describes the development of an effective learning community among Web-based RN-BSN students. The characteristics of the cohort leading to an effective learning community included supportiveness, open sharing of oneself, and socialization.

Filling gaps in knowledge: educating nurses to provide appropriate patient materials.

Assessing and addressing health literacy is a key issue in providing quality patient education. Often, nurses do not know how to do this. Continuing nursing education provides a venue for filling this gap in knowledge, contributing to better and safer patient care.

Students' Perceptions of Holistic Nursing Care

AIM This qualitative study aimed to investigate the trends and perceptions related to the provision of spiritual care for patients. BACKGROUND Holistic nursing integrates the body, mind, and spirit into care. However, nursing students from a traditional program, an RN‐BSN program, and a graduate nurse practitioner program voiced discomfort with providing such spiritual care. METHOD The study was a retrospective review of a convenience sample of journal entries about specific questions of how and when three groups of students developed ideas and concepts about spirituality. RESULTS Students embraced the idea of spirituality connected to their experiences. As students developed as registered nurses, their manner of including spirituality mirrored Benners model. CONCLUSION Additional education is needed for professional nurses concerning spirituality and the provision of spiritual care in a holistic manner.

The need for a community diabetes education curriculum for healthcare professionals.

Healthcare professionals need valuable up-to-date information on diabetes management and skills to treat and educate patients with diabetes mellitus. The Diabetes Education for Healthcare Professionals program was developed to provide healthcare professionals with current diabetes management skills. It was also designed to increase the number of certified diabetes educators in the area in which it was delivered. The program enrolled 147 participants and was delivered on four different occasions. Fifty-five of those participants stated a strong interest in pursuing certified diabetes educator certification, which may significantly increase the number of certified diabetes educators in both rural and urban areas of West Texas.

Addressing the community research needs of baccalaureate students.

This article describes a course designed to prepare RN-BSN students to assimilate relevant research findings into clinical practice. The course was developed as faculty accepted the challenge of providing didactic content completely online. Guided by two faculty members, two groups of students developed research proposals to respond to community needs identified by a local hospital and a nursing center.

Collaboration Across the Academic and Clinical Setting

ACCORDING TO THE INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, ‘‘each action that could improve quality—developing knowledge, translating new information into medical evidence, applying the new evidence to patient care—is marred by significant shortcomings and inefficiencies that result in missed opportunities, waste, and harm to patients.’’ Conversations between an acute care health agency and a university school of nursing regarding advancing best practices within nursing care led to the idea of establishing a center of excellence as a mechanism for organizing and managing innovative and visionary projects. As a result, the Center of Excellence in EvidenceBased Practice (CEEBP) was developed as a collaborative effort between academic and clinical settings. The CEEBP requires motivation, dedication, and teamwork to engage in evidencebased practice (EBP), instill the importance of EBP, and to share knowledge gained with other health care providers. The CEEBP was envisioned as a ‘‘Center without walls.’’ The principle intent for the center was to be open and supportive in meeting the needs identified by the unique agencies seeking knowledge and assistance from the center. Enthusiastic and persistent reassurance is provided to the members of project teams to support different projects and investigate avenues to disseminate results. The overall goals for this