Incorporating climate change into Doctor of Nursing Practice curricula.

Climate change is a global crisis with major impacts on planetary health and quality of life. Nurses are well positioned to recognize the major health consequences of climate change on health. Therefore, highlighting nurses' active engagement in mitigating climate change impact and resilience efforts is essential. However, there is little evidence of climate change content in nursing curricula. Climate change/planetary health content could be integrated into existing Doctor of Nursing Practice programs so that graduates, as influential leaders, are equipped to meet the challenges ahead. The domains, competencies and sub-competencies outlined in the Essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education (American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), 2021) are proposed as a curricular scaffold to integrate climate change content in DNP curricula. Climate change content matched to the AACN domains and competencies could be included in many existing DNP courses. Climate change would become a consistent concept throughout all DNP curricular programs rather than a specified course addressing climate change. The curricular structure presented would provide a foundation for enhancing DNP students' knowledge, attitudes and skills related to climate change. These students and future graduates would be well prepared to introduce changes in practices and policies at the local, national, and global levels.

Effectiveness of a training program based on maker education for baccalaureate nursing students: A quasi-experimental study.

OBJECTIVES: Maker education is a dominant force in education reform and is viewed as a revolutionary way to learn. As innovative pedagogy is continuously explored in the field of nursing, the emerging role of maker education must be examined. This research aims to build a nursing bachelor education program based on maker education and to evaluate the effectiveness of this program. METHODS: Forty volunteer junior students majoring in nursing from a college were the subjects for this quasi-experiment. The training program for nursing students based on maker education was developed and implemented as an additional class for a period of 12 weeks. Before and after the experiment, two measures including the "Williams Creative Scale" and "Current Status Questionnaire of Nursing Students' Learning" were adopted for investigation, and corresponding statistical methods were used for analysis. The degree of satisfaction with this training program was investigated after the experiment. RESULTS: The average scores of creativity, learning interest, cooperative learning skill, scientific research ability, and information attainment of the nursing students after the implementation of maker education all improved. The differences in the above points before and after the experiment were all statistically significant (P < 0.05). Most of the students expressed satisfaction with this training program (72.5% were very satisfied, 15.0% were partially satisfied, and 12.5% were not satisfied). CONCLUSION: Implementing the training program based on maker education enhanced student creativity, learning interest, cooperative learning skill, scientific research ability, and information attainment. Comprehensive nursing talents were also cultivated. Our data suggested the importance of improving this program, adopting the method, and pursuing research in nursing education.

Becoming a global citizen through nursing education: lessons learned in developing evaluation tools.

While global health practica are being increasingly described in nursing education literature, course evaluation of same receives comparatively less attention. In this article, authors report on an evaluation project, undertaken to rigorously examine the existing evaluation methods for an elective global health practicum with placements in India and northern Canada. Sixteen students were interviewed and course evaluation tools were reviewed. Resulting themes include students' sense of preparedness, the centrality of the student-preceptor relationship, the importance of supported self-reflection, and the usefulness of evaluation methods. Participants viewed existing course evaluation methods as generally useful, therefore requiring only minor adjustments. There were also structural revisions to the preparation, placement, and post-placement phases of the course and broader lessons learned. Lessons include the importance of critical social perspectives and the value of past students revisiting their experiences in such a way as make conscious connections between placement experiences and their current professional practice.