Utilization of Art in Nursing Education to Enhance Student Spiritual Growth and Holistic Nursing Practice.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate student nurses' perceptions of how creative art activities might support spiritual self-exploration, foster understanding of holistic care and promote spiritual growth in relation to Mercy and Jesuit values emphasized in their nursing program. Design: A qualitative design was used with data collected through surveys and students' reflections. Methods: Students enrolled in an introductory nursing course with a service-learning component participated in the study. Students were initially asked to create drawings depicting Mercy/Jesuit charisms, spirituality, and holistic nursing then complete written reflections. At the term's end, students created group art projects connecting service learning, holistic nursing care, and spiritual growth. Students responded to survey questions regarding spirituality, Mercy/Jesuit charisms, nursing practice, and their art experiences. Findings: Surveys were completed by 122 of the 137 students who participated in the art projects. After initial difficulty with artistic expression, most students reported the projects provided an opportunity for introspection related to personal spirituality, nursing, and the impact of service-learning experiences on future nursing practice. Conclusion: Arts-based learning can help students explore and express spirituality related to nursing and support their understanding and integration of values essential to the delivery of holistic nursing care.

Clinical Compass: Guiding the Relationship Between Clinical and Didactic Learning.

BACKGROUND: Evidence demonstrates there is a need for innovation and further investigation on how to best prepare nursing students for practice. A consistent framework is necessary to guide students, theory faculty, and clinical instructors. METHOD: A tool was created to transform the student learning experience. This tool, the Clinical Compass, provides opportunity to better integrate didactic knowledge within the clinical experience. The tool was evaluated by creating a questionnaire for both students and faculty. RESULTS: Survey data were collected from both student and instructor groups via an anonymous electronic survey. Both student and instructor surveys yielded positive results reflecting improved connection between theoretical and clinical knowledge. CONCLUSION: Data support continued use and ongoing revisions of the Clinical Compass tool. The tool will be adapted for use in the classroom, specialty areas, and virtual and simulation environments. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(5):286-288.].

Opioid Crisis: Equianalgesia Dosing Considerations for Home Care Cancer Patients.

As a result of the opioid epidemic, strategies have been implemented to reduce opioid consumption. These include regulatory policies, reduced opioid production, and nonopioid approaches for pain management. Although these policies may reduce opioid prescribing, there has been an unintended consequence for patients with severe cancer pain. Opioids are foundational for cancer pain management and are often required for patients during end-of-life care. Shortages of some opioid medications require knowledge of equianalgesic dosing. Equianalgesia is the conversion of comparable pain-relieving effects from one medication to another. There is a lack of consensus with regard to conversion standardization so researchers have created dosing principles that clinicians can follow. This article will describe some of these dosing principles and provide readers with sources for on-line dosage calculators.

Students' Perceptions of a Poem to Evaluate Learning: A Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND: How best to use poetry in nursing education remains uncertain. This study explored students' perceptions of incorporating a poem into a final examination to evaluate learning in an advanced physical assessment course. METHOD: Qualitative design and method were used to collect and analyze data retrieved from private interviews with seven graduate nursing students. RESULTS: The themes were Being There, Think More, and Feeling Rushed. Students recommended the strategy as a measure of learning because it simulated a real patient encounter and made them think at a deeper level than other traditional approaches used to evaluating learning. CONCLUSION: Poetry might engage nursing students in thinking critically and compassionately and be closer in touch with real-time nursing care than other traditionally used methods to evaluate nursing practice. More research is needed to validate poetry's best fit in nursing curricula. [J Nurs Educ. 2017;56(10):628-632.].

CE: Nursing's Evolving Role in Patient Safety.

: Background: In its 1999 report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) suggested that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die annually as a result of medical errors. The report urged health care institutions to break the silence surrounding such errors and to implement changes that would promote a culture of safety. OBJECTIVE: Our aim in conducting this content analysis of AJN articles was to explore the nurse's historical and contemporary role in promoting patient safety. We chose to focus on AJN because, as the oldest continuously published nursing journal, it provided a unique opportunity for us to view trends in nursing practice over more than 100 years. METHODS: We reviewed all AJN tables of contents from 1900 through 2015, identifying for inclusion articles with titles that suggested a focus on nursing care, patient safety, or clinical content. We then read and analyzed each of the final 1,086 articles over a period of nine months. FINDINGS: Our content analysis indicates that the early articles (from 1900 through 1920) focused on such safety measures as asepsis and the newly understood germ theory. In the 1930s, articles proposed methods for preventing medication errors and encouraged the development of written procedures to standardize care. During World War II, nurse authors identified improved patient survival rates with the use of "shock wards" and recovery rooms. The 1950s saw the emergence of progressive patient care initiatives, through which patients were assigned to various levels of care (intensive, intermediate, self, long-term, or home care) based on patient acuity. The 1960s brought increasingly complex equipment and medication regimens, which created safety problems. Hospital-acquired infections were recognized. Unit-dose medication was instituted in the 1970s. In the next two decades, medication and nursing-procedure safety were emphasized. From 2000 to 2015, articles looked beyond human performance as causes of health care errors to systemic factors, such as poor communication, patient-nurse ratios, provider skill mix, disruptive or inappropriate provider behavior, shift work, and long working hours. CONCLUSIONS: Emphasis on patient safety increased as patient care became more complex. As nurses developed a professional identity, they often put a spotlight on safety concerns and solutions. The IOM report, which encouraged research focused on systemic solutions to errors, was instrumental in furthering the very culture of safety that the nursing profession had championed.

Physical Therapy and Exercise for Hospice Patients.

Falls are a particular health issue for hospice patients with cancer. Studies have found that 50% of patients diagnosed with advanced cancer fall during the subsequent 6-month time frame. The impact of falls on hospice and cancer patients is costly both in terms of reduced functional quality of life, increased anxiety and resulting pain and suffering. Physical therapy (PT) and exercise have been shown to be effective in reducing falls among older adult populations in the community. The purpose of this article is to review studies that examined PT and exercise for hospice and terminally ill cancer patients. Although none of the five studies evaluated the effect of PT and exercise specifically on falls, outcomes included factors such as balance, strength, pain, sleep and fatigue, all of which can contribute to falls. All the studies reviewed found benefits such as improved health status, functional mobility, or muscle strength.

Using Poetry Writing and Sharing to Promote Student Empathy and Caring.

A poetry writing activity revealed both empathy and caring among nursing students. Using course readings to identify a topic, students created and shared their poems in an online format. The poems and students' reactions concur with existing literature that poetry writing and sharing reveals empathy and caring. Suggestions for using a poetry writing activity in nursing education are included.