ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Poverty is a harsh reality for more than 40 million Americans, which can lead to detrimental health outcomes. PROBLEM: Considering health professionals encounter clients of low-income status, increasing awareness and empathy toward this population is essential. APPROACH: This article describes a novel approach to conducting poverty simulations by using community volunteers that are currently living or have recently lived in poverty, lending to a more authentic experience for students. The community volunteers acted as resource workers during the simulation. OUTCOMES: Five lessons were learned as part of this authentic approach including the importance of orientation, consistent volunteer recruitment, volunteer appreciation, simulation role ownership, and importance of incentives. CONCLUSION: This approach is an effective initial step in increasing awareness and empathy among health care profession students toward individuals living in poverty. Use of community volunteers with personal experience with poverty enhances the realism of this experience for students.
Subject(s)
Education, Nursing/organization & administration , Empathy , Health Personnel/education , Health Personnel/psychology , Poverty/psychology , Simulation Training/organization & administration , Students, Health Occupations/psychology , Adult , Attitude of Health Personnel , Curriculum , Female , Humans , Male , Nursing Education Research , United States , Volunteers , Young AdultABSTRACT
This study examined pre-school children's understanding of the concept of cancer and their parent's perceptions of their child's understanding of cancer. Parents completed a questionnaire and pre-school children were administered an interview. The results showed that when children indicated that they knew something about cancer, their responses associated cancer with something medical, bad or harmful, or sickness or an illness. Parents correctly estimated their child's understanding of cancer if they had talked previously with their child about cancer. Children whose parents reported discussing cancer were more likely to give responses indicating some knowledge about cancer. Some children reported knowing about cancer in the absence of parent teaching.
