Legislative Advocacy on Capitol Hill: Experiential Learning for Nursing and Midwifery Students.

BACKGROUND: Policies, regulations, and laws influence all aspects of health care, including the education of health care professionals, independent practice, and patient access to care. Health equity and social justice are mediated through policy. PROBLEM: While health policy knowledge and skills are recognized as essential competencies within nursing and midwifery curricula, most students graduate with limited or no experience engaging in advocacy efforts to advance legislation that would improve health systems and the delivery of care. APPROACH: An experiential learning activity is described that gives students authentic experience in federal legislative advocacy. OUTCOMES: Students report powerful, positive learning from interacting with their legislators. CONCLUSION: Support of a legislative advocacy experiential learning activity requires ongoing faculty initiative and can promote advancement of health policy bills into law. Opportunities to participate in legislative advocacy need to be expanded within nursing and midwifery education to cultivate leaders who can effect policy change.

Rapid Curricular Innovations During COVID-19 Clinical Suspension: Maintaining Student Engagement with Simulation Experiences.

Health care education programs were faced with the need to quickly adapt to a new reality during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Students were temporarily suspended from campus and clinical sites, requiring prompt changes in structure to their didactic and clinical learning. This article describes the rapid adjustments that one midwifery and women's health nurse practitioner education program created using both synchronous and asynchronous simulation experiences to promote student learning and ongoing engagement. Flexibility and reflexivity were needed by faculty and students alike in the face of the multiple changes wrought by the pandemic. Curricular changes were made simultaneously in many courses. Objective structured clinical examinations simulate telehealth experiences that assess knowledge, clinical reasoning, and professional behaviors via a scripted scenario and an actor patient. On-call simulations mimic telephone triage and provide students the opportunity to build listening, assessment, and management skills for prenatal and intrapartum scenarios. Students are provided equipment and virtual instruction in an intrauterine device insertion session, which promotes skill acquisition and self-confidence. Trigger films are used to visualize real-life or scripted clinical encounters, leading to discussion and decision-making, particularly in the affective domain. Bilateral learning tools, similar to case studies, provide students an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and critical thinking with a mechanism for faculty feedback. Web-based virtual clinical encounter learning tools using patient avatars prompt additional student learning. Suturing skills introduced in live remote group sessions are augmented with video-guided individual practice. This article describes each of these adapted and innovative simulation methods and shares lessons learned during their development and implementation.

Mentoring students engaging in scholarly projects and dissertations in doctoral nursing programs.

BACKGROUND: Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs in the US have grown exponentially, outnumbering Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Nursing programs. Faculty are mentoring increasing numbers of students on DNP projects or PhD dissertations. PURPOSE: This descriptive study explored faculty characteristics and examined support, engagement, and outcomes of American Association of Colleges of Nursing member nursing faculty mentoring student DNP projects or PhD dissertations. METHOD: A researcher-developed survey tool was emailed to 550 Deans and Program Directors of AACN doctoral programs for distribution to their doctoral faculty. Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. FINDINGS: 177 DNP and 53 PhD (N=230) program surveys were completed. Faculty described challenges in the mentoring role including: time constraints, workload allocation, resources, faculty role preparation, student readiness, and variability in student outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Additional dialogue and consensus is required to promote mentoring of students in nursing doctoral programs to ensure rigor of scholarly outcomes.

Perceived Evidence-Based Practice Competency Acquisition in Graduate Nursing Students: Impact of Intentional Course Design.

BACKGROUND: Acquisition of evidence-based practice (EBP) competencies in graduate-level nursing programs bridges the research-practice gap in professional practice. This study evaluated the impact of the Star Model of Knowledge Transformation as a framework for course design on graduate-level nursing students' perceived EBP competencies. METHOD: Data were collected from 2012 to 2017 (N = 544). Repeated-measures ANOVA was used to analyze pre- and postassessment data over time. Data were collected for each of the five stages or Star Points of EBP competencies. RESULTS: Significant postcourse improvement in perceived EBP competencies was demonstrated (p ≤ .000) for all Star Points and years. The greatest pre- and postassessment percentage change occurred in the Translation Star Point scores and the least percentage change occurred in Discovery. CONCLUSION: These data support the use of intentional course design based on a recognized EBP model to improve perceived EBP competencies in Master of Science in Nursing students. [J Contin Educ Nurs. 2019;50(2):79-86.].

Cultural Competence of Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses.

OBJECTIVES: To measure the cultural competence level of obstetric and neonatal nurses, explore relationships among cultural competence and selected sociodemographic variables, and identify factors related to cultural competence. DESIGN: Descriptive correlational study. SETTING: Online survey. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 132 obstetric and neonatal registered nurses practicing in the United States. METHODS: Nurse participants completed the Cultural Competence Assessment (CCA) instrument, which included Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity (CAS) and Cultural Competence Behaviors (CCB) subscales, and a sociodemographic questionnaire. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: The average CCA score was 5.38 (possible range = 1.00-7.00). CCA scores were negatively correlated with age and positively correlated with self-ranked cultural competence, years of nursing experience, years of experience within the specialty area, and number of types of previous cultural diversity training. CCB subscale scores were correlated positively with age, years of nursing experience, years of experience within the specialty area, and number of types of previous diversity training. CAS subscale scores were positively correlated with number of types of previous diversity training. Standard multiple linear regression explained approximately 10%, 12%, and 11% of the variance in CCA, CAS, and CCB scores, respectively. CONCLUSION: Obstetric and neonatal registered nurses should continue to work toward greater cultural competence. Exposing nurses to more types of cultural diversity training may help achieve greater cultural competence.