Collaborating With Rural Practice Partners to Provide a Primary Care Experience for Prelicensure Nursing Students.

BACKGROUND: Prelicensure nursing education has generally emphasized acute care; however, as primary care changes in the United States, academia must transform. The national call for transforming primary care requires innovation in the education of prelicensure nursing students. PROBLEM: To ensure future RNs can function in the primary care setting and assume enhanced roles within the interprofessional team, prelicensure nursing students need to be exposed to primary care. A key barrier to providing this essential education is the lack of partnerships with primary care facilities. APPROACH: The purpose of this project was to collaborate with rural practice partners to provide a primary care clinical experience for prelicensure nursing students. OUTCOMES: Collaboration between academic-practice partners to develop a clinical experience for prelicensure nursing students allowed exposure to the role of RNs in rural primary care. CONCLUSIONS: By sharing the process for planning the clinical experience, other interested academic institutions may replicate similar opportunities.

Current Trends and Practices of Intensive Care Unit Visitations.

BACKGROUND: Few topics have existed for decades and created as much of a debate as when discussing appropriate visitation policies for patients. Studies have continued to document the conflicted opinions of nurses to commit to fully open visiting hours for various reasons. Family members are very definite in their desire to be at their loved one's bedside. OBJECTIVE: To review the visiting policies of acute care hospitals in California and compare them to the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses recommendations. METHODS: This descriptive study collected data from California acute care hospital websites about critical care visiting hours to assess visiting hours and the type, age, and number of visitors. RESULTS: Review of 363 hospital websites demonstrated a wide variation in policies when listed. Those that did post their visitation rules had no consistent policies regarding visiting hours or age, relationship, or number of visitors. CONCLUSIONS: Hospital visitation policies in California are inconsistent and not evenly enforced. They do not reflect current evidence and practice guidelines. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: Ethics require the nurses to advocate for their patient. In this role, nurses need to become proactive in implementing policy changes in their institution based on current evidence and practice guidelines.