Personal protective equipment training team: a community nursing initiative.

COVID-19 provided significant challenges for community services and care homes. Residential and nursing care patients are considered highly vulnerable to the coronavirus due to their physical needs and environmental factors. Significant concern was raised with personal protective equipment (PPE) availability and appropriate training and support in local care homes. Members of the district nursing team and community services formed a team to deliver face to face training and support to care home workers to improve PPE adherence and reduce risks of transmission. Visits were offered to all 46 care homes in the locality and over 55 visits for teaching were performed in the first month. Challenges were faced with managing and prioritising frontline clinical duties. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and care staff benefited from face-to-face delivery of education to support best practice.

COVID-19 updates: Real-time epidemiology for BSN community/public health nursing course.

Teaching nursing students about epidemiology is often a daunting task, with many lacking the knowledge and application of and interest in epidemiological elements. Baccalaureate science nursing (BSN) essentials state that BSN nursing students need educational applications for health promotion and disease prevention for effective population-based communities. The COVID-19 pandemic data have allowed for real-time analysis and synthesis of live application of data which meets the specific requirements on current and future epidemiological problems. Nursing students can monitor weekly trends through disease surveillance and application to the surrounding community, providing for effective critical thinking and clinical judgment. Comparing weekly changes in data assists in developing interest on applying this information for practice. Discussion about background evidence, valid national, regional, and local websites, specific implementation steps, and overall student reflection feedback will be discussed.

Adapting a community health nursing course to an online format.

As COVID-19 spread through the United States in March 2020, universities were forced to move to online learning to minimize COVID-19 transmission. Students in nursing programs represent several generational cohorts with varying learning styles and comfort with technology. This move to an online format required faculty and students to use digital tools from video conferencing, remote testing, online classes, and an unfolding case study. Community Health Nursing is an important capstone course in the Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing curriculum. Community health nursing focuses on the care of populations. Communication skills, analysis of data from various sources, collaboration with peers, and planning and evaluation of interventions are essential competencies of community health nursing. This article describes strategies to teach the core competencies online and how two group activities were formatted for online delivery: development of a public service announcement and a debate. The faculty employed an approach to online teaching that preserved the activities and fostered student engagement through the use of various online strategies.

Challenges and opportunities: the role of the district nurse in influencing practice education.

The responsibility of the district nurse (DN), alongside complex case management and leadership, is to ensure Specialist Practitioner Qualification District Nurse (SPQDN) education continues to create practitioners delivering quality evidence-based care. DN leadership and its importance have come to the fore during the COVID-19 crisis, where hospital discharges have increased rapidly to make way for highly complex admissions (HM Government, 2020). This paper examines the importance of the SPQDN qualification, exploring the role of the DN within practice education. Continuation of the vital DN qualification will ensure that the numbers of qualified DNs increase, ultimately protecting community capacity. With a move towards an apprenticeship model to achieve the SPQDN, DNs must engage with and influence curriculum development to confirm courses deliver requirements of the workplace, commissioners and the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan. Expectations of the DN role within practice education have changed, moving away from the practice teacher standards to the new Nursing and Midwifery Council Standards for Student Support and Assessment. This poses new challenges in DN education in practice. The implications of this transition threaten to de-value the quality of the assessment process by removing the high standards of preparation previously demanded; ultimately, this is a risk to the provision of the quality practice education that previously existed.