Dr. Shira Birnbaum describes a full-semester writing course she developed and strategies for improving student writing. Students identify problems in early drafts of their work, which they subsequently learn to resolve. She emphasizes that writing, like clinical learning, requires an investment of time and labor far beyond what is typical in didactic approaches to classroom-based graduate education. Students reflect on their learning in the accompanying article.
High-quality video productions integrating 360° simulations of real-life nursing scenarios have shown promise in enriching learning experiences and refining students’ competencies, attitudes, and knowledge. Dr. Patrícia Freire de Vasconcelos describes the development of a 360° video simulation scenario for teaching medication safety in nursing. The methodological framework comprised 3 key stages: (1) crafting the script; (2) evaluating the script’s validity by expert judges in medication administration; and (3) developing the set, filming scenes, and refining the video using a 360° camera. The 360° video was tailored for utilization with virtual reality glasses, rendering it accessible for integration into nursing education curricula. The final version consisted of a continuous scene that ended with a question that prompted the identification of errors. Learn more in their article.
Adjunct clinical faculty play a vital role in ensuring an adequate number of instructors for nursing students. Dr. Bryce Catarelli and Professor Karen Schofield describe a clinical bingo game they developed for first-semester nursing students and clinical faculty to serve as a guide for the hospital experience. Each space on the bingo card is a skill practiced in laboratory/simulation or an action that is appropriate for students' ability and level of education. Each skill is signed off on completion, creating a log of skills/actions performed by the student. Their article provides additional details about their bingo game.
In this podcast, Dr. Kaitlyn Kolcun and Dr. Kelly Sullivan explain their rationale and process for transforming traditional prebriefing and debriefing experiences for a virtual-reality simulation to an online asynchronous format. Learn more about how they developed and implemented asynchronous prebriefing and debriefing activities and assessed student learning outcomes. Drs. Kolcun and Sullivan also describe the interesting subjective feedback students provided about the asynchronous virtual simulation experience. Read more about this in their teaching tip.
Nursing students’ perceived usability toward a technology application affects their learning experience. Few studies have investigated immersive virtual reality (IVR) simulation for learning fundamental nursing skills. Dr. Wong and her research team explored the usability of IVR simulations with first-year nursing students and their perspectives on this learning modality. In this podcast and article (which is Open Access), Dr. Wong describes their mixed-methods study using surveys and focus groups. The findings demonstrated students’ positive inclinations toward IVR simulation learning. Two areas emerged: using IVR simulation as a complementary modality for learning fundamental nursing skills and barriers affecting students’ usability of this technology. By addressing concerns about usability, IVR simulation can be an important complementary modality for skills learning. Read the article and share with colleagues.
Although the numbers of nurses from historically underrepresented ethnic and racial populations are increasing in the workforce, the distribution of nurses in the US is still not representative of the population. In this podcast and article, Dr. Joanne Noone and Ms. Adriana Valenzuela Martinez present their program that improved the underrepresented nursing student population from 11% to 33%.
Dr. Erika Janssen and Dr. Lindsay Morgan explain the Dunning-Kruger effect and how it influences self-assessment of cultural competence in nursing students. Their research revealed that students with no direct care experience in LGBTQ+ communities were more confident in their communication skills and culturally congruent care than those who had been exposed to sexual minorities in clinical settings. In this podcast, learn more about how knowledge of the Dunning-Kruger effect can help nurse educators continuously improve curricula and guide students to develop greater self-awareness of gaps in competency in delivering culturally congruent care. Learn more about this research in their article.
In this podcast, Dr. Karen Mihelich describes the impetus behind development and implementation of experiential education focused on food insecurity in her local community. She integrated community-engaged service, implicit bias education, teamwork and communication, budget management, and essential DNP competencies into a community-engaged practicum and service project. Listen to her story and learn how her students and community partners responded, and find out how she and her students and colleagues sustained this community project. Dr. Mihelich provides more details in her article.
Exposure to workplace violence (WPV) is common in health care, and little is known about nurse practitioner (NP) students’ experiences during their graduate nursing clinical education. In this podcast, Drs. Kristin Gigli and John Gonzalez describe the findings from their study on WPV experienced by NP students. A total of 334 NPs responded. More than a quarter (27%) of these students experienced WPV during their graduate program: preceptors were the most reported perpetrators (44%). In this podcast, the authors describe relevant federal policies and share strategies that schools of nursing can use to reduce student exposure to WPV. Read the full study in their article.
Faculty in a Family Nurse Practitioner program integrated entrustable professional activities (EPAs) that aligned with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Essentials and National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties Core NP Competencies into their clinical assessment tool. Student performance expectations at different points in the program were outlined. Students documented each time they performed an EPA during clinical experiences. Drs. Angel Anthamatten and Courtney Pitts discuss this initiative and outcomes in the podcast. Read the full article (it is open access).
The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT into nursing education marks a transformative advance in personalized learning and interactive engagement. Variability in faculty’s experience with AI outputs highlights the need for well-crafted prompts that align with educational objectives, maximize learning outcomes, and ensure contextual relevance. Effective prompting is a key to eliciting accurate, relevant responses from AI, fostering a dynamic learning environment that bolsters student comprehension of complex topics. Learn more about prompt engineering in this podcast with an expert, Dr. Grace Sun. She explains this further with many other examples in her article.
Nursing students should learn how to communicate effectively in their written assignments. Good writing skills are an indication of how the student processes information. Poor writing skills may impact patient care. This podcast with Miriam Bowers-Abbott discusses ways nurse educators can improve interrater reliability in the evaluation of students’ written work. Learn more about using Minimum Standards in her article.
Metacognitive exam review tools, also called exam wrappers, are a promising intervention to address the problem of poor exam performance. Tools of this kind have been shown to positively impact student learning, confidence, and exam performance across multiple disciplines and levels of education, but little is known about the use of exam wrappers in nursing education. In this podcast, Jessica Gay presents the results of a research study about the efficacy of exam wrappers as a student success strategy. Be sure to read their article too.
Dr. Kateryna Metersky uses poetry as a teaching strategy in her courses. She describes the process she uses to teach through poetry, strategies for implementing poetry in a variety of nursing courses, and positive outcomes of this teaching approach. She also shares challenges she has encountered. A special part of this podcast is Dr. Metersky reading her own poetic expression for listeners.
Digital simulations, such as computer-based and virtual reality (VR)-based, have been increasingly supported as simulation modalities in nursing education. This podcast presents a VR experience for students to promote communication, critical thinking, and clinical reasoning in a prelicensure nursing program. Drs. Willett, Chung, Adelman-Mullally, and Ng, authors of the article, share lessons learned as they implemented VR in their program.
If you are interested in developing an interprofessional course to teach the concept of big data, this podcast and article are for you. Dr. Margaret Jeanne Calcote discusses the course they developed that introduces students from the schools of nursing, medicine, and pharmacy to the use of big data in health care. Students use the academic medical center’s Patient Cohort Explorer software application to access electronic health record data. Dr. Calcote explains how the competencies nursing students demonstrated in this course align with the new AACN Essentials.
Gamification is an approach that can be used to introduce interprofessional collaboration in nursing and health science. Dr. Valerie Wright developed an innovative card game, COLLABORATE, to introduce students to interprofessional practice. In this podcast she explains how they created and tested COLLABORATE. Read their article (it is open access) and share with others. More information about the game COLLABORATE and where to obtain it can be found here.
In this podcast Dr. Rinaldi explains backward design and provides an example of using backward design for developing a neonatal nursing seminar course for baccalaureate students. She provides additional details about background design in her article.
In this podcast, Dr. Ginger Schroers describes the development and testing of a behavioral strategy (Stay SAFE) to manage interruptions in one’s daily workflow. She also provides practical strategies for dealing with interruptions to everyday professional tasks and ultimately decrease errors and increase patient safety. Article
Students need to develop proficiency in psychomotor skills. Paired with deliberate practice, mastery learning strategies can build skill competence among learners and prepare them for clinical practice. Kaitlyn Burke discusses how a psychomotor and procedural skill framework, blended learning, a video evaluation platform, and an electronic tracking tool were implemented for skill development and retention throughout an undergraduate curriculum. Article
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The quality of voices is horrible