ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The growth of international migration and globalization has increasingly diversified patient populations, emphasizing the need for nursing students to provide competent spiritual care. PURPOSE: To understand the teaching and learning strategies used to prepare undergraduate nursing students for spiritual care. METHODS: An integrative review with deductive data analysis was used to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize diverse research methodologies. RESULTS: Three educational approaches were identified, including passive, reflective, and combinatory approaches. The combinatory approach appears most appropriate for diverse learning styles within a student group. CONCLUSIONS: No one strategy is best, but any combination of educational strategies can positively impact spiritual care competency within clinical practice.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Despite a consensus that followers and leaders are interdependent, the focus of nursing education, practice, and research has been leader centred. This has spawned calls in the nursing literature for increased scholarship on followership in nursing. PURPOSE: To develop a grounded theory of followership in nursing. METHOD: This study addressed the question - how do registered nurses understand followership? 11 registered nurses participated in online interviews that were later transcribed and analyzed following Charmaz's approach to Constructivist Grounded Theory. RESULTS: The core category of trusting informal and formal leaders was co-constructed from the data. A conceptual model, titled Followership as Trust in Acute Care Nursing Teams, illustrates that the nurses' decision to trust (and subsequently to engage in following) hinges on sharing the load (understanding one's role, accepting one's role, and working together); demonstrating knowledge (having experience, modelling, and mentoring); and connecting through communication (knowing the goal and communicating clearly). When participants fully trust formal and informal leaders, they engage in following as proactive members of the team, provide solutions to problems, and take initiative. Conversely, when they are less trusting of informal and formal leaders, they are less willing to follow. CONCLUSIONS: This study underscores the importance of trust between followers and leaders for effective team function and safe patient care. More research on the follower-leader dynamic in nursing is needed to inform education, policy, and practice so that every nurse possesses the knowledge and skill to be both a follower and a leader.
Subject(s)
Education, Nursing , Nurses , Humans , Critical Care , LeadershipABSTRACT
Although the concept of followership has existed for several decades and is related to effective leadership, the concept is poorly understood and not well integrated into nursing education, practice and research. This paper reports the findings of a scoping review of 21 articles on followership in nursing. The literature discloses that followership and leadership roles are co-constructed, interdependent and synergistic and influence organizational success and patient safety. The lack of scholarship on followership in nursing is notable and points to the need for a greater understanding of the follower-leader dynamic and effective follower behaviours in the healthcare context.
Subject(s)
Education, Nursing , Leadership , Delivery of Health Care , Humans , Patient SafetyABSTRACT
There is nearly a century of educational research that has demonstrated that three option multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are as valid and reliable as four or five option, yet this format continues to be underutilized in educational institutions. This replication study was a quasi-experimental between groups research design conducted at three Canadian schools of nursing to examine the psychometric properties of three option MCQs when compared to the more traditional four option questions. Data analysis revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in the item discrimination, difficulty or mean examination scores when MCQs were administered with three versus four option answer choices.
