Introspective Learning From Interprofessional Virtual Grand Rounds.

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional collaboration in health care settings improves patient safety and outcomes, yet collaboration among health professionals requires specific competencies and skills. Providing nursing students with interprofessional learning experiences with multiple health professions is possible yet challenging. PROBLEM: Opportunities for effective online interprofessional learning are lacking. APPROACH: This article explores nursing students' reflections on how an interprofessional learning experience, Virtual Grand Rounds (VGRs), influenced their personal development and provided meaningful learning that they can use in their practices as professional nurses. Thematic analysis was done on the open-ended questions in students' final reflection assignment. OUTCOMES: Analysis of student reflections identified 5 learning themes including the value of teamwork and collaboration, the importance of communication skills, professional identity, plans to engage diverse health professions, and the desire for future learning. CONCLUSIONS: Student reflections indicate the VGR was an effective method for nursing students to experience collaboration with multiple health professions without disrupting curriculums.

Impact of Service Learning on Student Attitudes Toward the Poor and Underserved.

BACKGROUND: Patient-centered care necessitates an appreciation of one's socioeconomic status and its influence on health and well-being. PURPOSE: We explored how student attitudes toward poverty changed as a result of participation in an interprofessional service-learning experience. METHODS: Students from 6 health profession programs participated in an interprofessional military-sponsored free health care event serving nearly 8000 individuals from our community. Students' pre-post attitudes toward poverty were measured using the Attitude Toward Poverty Short Form (ATP-SF) and Beliefs About the Relationship Between Poverty and Health (BRPH) scale. RESULTS: Two subscales and 14 items on the ATP-SF and 3 items on the BRPH had significant differences between their pre and post experience. Students expressed less bias, a decrease in stereotypic views, and a heightened willingness to advocate on behalf of those with limited means of support. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that experiential, transformative service learning has a positive impact on students' attitudes toward poverty and the underserved.

Effective Learning of Interprofessional Teamwork.

Educators are actively identifying optimal teaching-learning strategies that afford future health care professionals opportunities to acquire skills necessary to function as a member of an interprofessional team. This article describes the development of an interprofessional team learning experience consisting of students from 6 health professions programs within 1 college of health professions. Student achievement of interprofessional team competencies were evaluated in a pretest-posttest format. Essential components of a 7-week program, teaching methodologies, and course evaluations are presented.

Teaching students to work with vulnerable populations through a patient advocacy course.

Nursing students need an in-depth understanding of how social determinants, such as poverty, unsafe housing, and illiteracy, impact the health of patients. The authors describe how a patient advocacy service-learning course increased students' awareness and proficiency in working with the challenges low-income, vulnerable individuals face as they attempt to improve their lives and health. Course learning objectives, essential requirements, and student reflections are presented.

Evaluation methods for hospital projects.

The authors report the findings of a survey of hospital managers on the utilization of various project selection and evaluation methodologies. The focus of the analysis was the empirical relationship between a portfolio of project evaluation(1) methods actually utilized for a given project and several measures of perceived project success. The analysis revealed that cost-benefit analysis and top management support were the two project evaluation methods used most often by the hospital managers. The authors' empirical assessment provides evidence that top management support is associated with overall project success.

Building interdisciplinary teamwork among allied health students through live clinical case simulations.

A limited, yet growing, body of research suggests that health care students educated in interdisciplinary teamwork may become more collaborative professionals in the workplace, which, in turn, may foster more productive and satisfied health care professionals. Researchers also have identified lower mortality and morbidity rates, fewer hospitalizations, decreased costs, and improved function by patients among significant health benefits of interdisciplinary teamwork, especially when it is applied to underserved and geriatric populations. Such positive outcomes have prompted medical schools and accreditation boards of many allied health professions to add interdisciplinary education into their training requirements. Meeting these requirements has challenged universities, where there are multiple allied health programs and limited time, faculty, and financial resources to coordinate interdisciplinary education. The challenges have been magnified by insufficient research on the most effective methods to educate university students about interdisciplinary teamwork. This article presents the background, evolution, and key building blocks of one such method: a simulation-based workshop designed at our university over 7 years to educate its allied health students about various health professions through shared learning, interaction, and collaboration.

Providing staff feedback to nurse managers using internal resources.

In many regions of the country, hospitals are faced with increasingly serious nursing shortages. Many hospitals have developed incentive packages to recruit nurses. However, the literature clearly demonstrates that the nurses' work environments must be addressed if nurses are to be retained. The authors created a questionnaire to measure registered nurses' attitudes toward their work environments. Information from this questionnaire can provide timely feedback and enable nurse managers to identify and correct organizational factors that could lead to turnover. The questionnaire takes fewer than 10 minutes for each nurse to complete, and nurse managers can easily calculate the results. The questionnaire can be modified for use in other healthcare facilities.