Vicki Simpson

Flipping the Classroom to Teach Population Health: Increasing the Relevance.

In recent years, there have been multiple calls to enhance the population health and health promotion aspects of nursing programs. Further impetus has been provided by passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 with its focus on prevention. The need to develop students who can critically think and apply knowledge learned is crucial to the development of nurses who can integrate and apply the concepts of population-focused practice in society and a healthcare system undergoing transformation. This coupled with the ever changing needs of learners requires a different approach to content delivery and presentation. Flipped classroom courses, with an online component, offer the flexibility and technology desired by current undergraduate students. The use of a flipped classroom approach to re-design a population health course in a Midwestern nursing program resulted in stronger course evaluations from students and reflected better student understanding of the relevance of such content in a nursing curriculum.

The concept of shared mental models in healthcare collaboration

AIM To report an analysis of the concept of shared mental models in health care. BACKGROUND Shared mental models have been described as facilitators of effective teamwork. The complexity and criticality of the current healthcare system requires shared mental models to enhance safe and effective patient/client care. Yet, the current concept definition in the healthcare literature is vague and, therefore, difficult to apply consistently in research and practice. DESIGN Concept analysis. DATA SOURCES Literature for this concept analysis was retrieved from several databases, including CINAHL, PubMed and MEDLINE (EBSCO Interface), for the years 1997-2013. METHODS Walker and Avants approach to concept analysis was employed and, following Paleys guidance, embedded in extant theory from the team literature. RESULTS Although teamwork and collaboration are discussed frequently in healthcare literature, the concept of shared mental models in that context is not as commonly found but is increasing in appearance. Our concept analysis defines shared mental models as individually held knowledge structures that help team members function collaboratively in their environments and are comprised of the attributes of content, similarity, accuracy and dynamics. CONCLUSION This theoretically grounded concept analysis provides a foundation for a middle-range descriptive theory of shared mental models in nursing and health care. Further research concerning the impact of shared mental models in the healthcare setting can result in development and refinement of shared mental models to support effective teamwork and collaboration.

Nurse and Physician Involvement in Health Risk Appraisals An Integrative Review

Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors continue to be a strong contributor to chronic illness and death in the United States. Despite the health care system’s efforts to refocus on prevention, primary care visits remain acute care focused. Health risk appraisals are tools that can be used by primary care providers to enhance lifestyle behavior change and prevention efforts. The purpose of this integrative review is to examine nurse and physician use of health risk appraisals in primary care. A total of 26 national and international papers, selected through an electronic database and ancestry search, were reviewed. Identified nurse and physician interventions in addition to other programming included helping participants understand and interpret feedback, behavioral counseling, and development of plans to address unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. The most common intervention was provision of telephonic nurse advice lines. Overall outcomes were positive. The use of these tools could be key to enhancing primary care prevention.

Health Risk Appraisals With Aging Adults: An Integrative Review:

Identification of risk factors unique to the aging experience is vital to support health promotion efforts and prevent loss of independence for the increasing aging population. Health risk appraisals are tools capable of identifying a broad range of factors that affect health; however, these tools were designed for use with predominantly healthy working-age adults. The purpose of this integrative review was to describe uses and adaptations of health risk appraisals with aging adults. A total of 43 articles met inclusion criteria, identifying multiple adaptations necessary to effectively identify the risks faced by aging adults, including those related to activities of daily living, pain, depression, social support/network, vision, hearing, and cognitive status. Uses included support for health promotion efforts and to determine risk for depression, falls, and loss of independence. Further research needs to be done to evaluate impact when used as a health promotion and prevention tool for aging adults.

Toward creating an optimal acute care clinical learning environment: insights from staff, faculty, and students.

Understanding how a clinical site impacts student learning was the focus for a participatory action research study in which three separate focus groups for students, faculty, and staff were convened. Participants were asked to identify what they enjoyed or liked about the clinical setting, what they disliked about the clinical setting, and what they would change about the clinical setting. Themes identified by a constant comparative method included experiences provided, attitudes, and expectations. Although the researchers anticipated that each group would have a unique and different perspective on the clinical experience, respondents were consistent in their beliefs both within and among groups. Of interest, each participant group attributed an ineffective clinical learning environment to external causes.

Perception, Interpretation, and Impact of Health Risk Appraisal Feedback: Pilot Studies of an Assessment Tool:

One mandate of the Affordable Care Act is continued support of workplace wellness programs. A tool used to encourage behavior change is a health risk appraisal (HRA). However, research indicates there is limited benefit to HRAs unless supported by additional health interventions. The purpose of these two pilot studies was to examine effects of the individual HRA personalized feedback, including the perceived value of the feedback and its influence on behavior change. Six months after completing and receiving HRA personalized feedback, participants in two separate Indiana organizations answered survey questions about the HRA value, motivational influence, and ability to prompt behavior change. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, analyses of variance, and factor analysis were used to analyze the influence of various factors and test the relationship between HRA generated feedback and these characteristics. The majority of respondents indicated the HRA was helpful with 69% (Study 1, n = 51) and 63% (Study 2, n = 116) of the respondents reporting an attempted behavior change. Preliminary results indicate that completion of an HRA with feedback alone may be beneficial in prompting behavior change.

Population health and nurse education – time to step-up

• Contemporary trends in population health threaten the sustainability of current approaches to care delivery.

Improving teaching assistants' orientation in a school of nursing: a lean approach.

Newly hired teaching assistants (TAs) come to schools of nursing with varying levels of experience in academic institutions. Therefore, the orientation of TAs becomes important at a micro level (student instruction) and macro level (mission of the organization). We describe a Lean approach to strengthening TA orientation and reducing waste and inconsistency. Developed solutions and tools through the lens of quality improvement are discussed.