ABSTRACT
Today's nursing programs are struggling to accommodate the changing needs of the health care environment and need to make changes in how students are taught. Using constructivism theory, whereby learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current or past knowledge, leaders in nursing education can make a paradigm shift toward concept-based curricula. This article presents a summary and analysis of constructivism and an innovative application of its active-learning principles to curriculum development, specifically for the education of nursing students.
Subject(s)
Education, Nursing , Nursing Theory , Problem-Based Learning , Cognitive Science , Curriculum , Humans , Models, Psychological , United StatesABSTRACT
This study sought to determine the effect of an advanced-practice-nurse (APN)-led telephone intervention on hospital readmissions, quality of life, and self-care behaviors (SCBs) of patients with heart failure (HF). Twenty participants were randomly assigned to either an experimental group that received the APN-led telephone intervention (ALTI) or a control group that received usual care in this pretest-posttest experimental study. The results of this study support the idea that an ALTI positively impacts outcomes of patient with HF, particularly by improving SCBs and decreasing hospital readmissions. An ALTI warrants consideration to improve outcomes of patients with HF.