A Transformative Learning Experience for Senior Nursing Students.

BACKGROUND: Research suggests that clinical practicums in hospital-based settings are important, even if condensed, to provide students with the opportunity for real-world learning experiences. Rational dialogue makes learning meaningful and empowers students to learn by reflecting on experiences. PROBLEM: The COVID-19 pandemic minimized availability of traditional one-to-one mentorship practicums. APPROACH: This article describes the use of critical reflection on experiences in an undergraduate senior mentorship course to assess student learning through the thematic analysis of writing assignments. Guided by Mezirow's transformative learning theory, students completed a traditional group clinical practice, written reflective journals and virtual seminars focused on role development, and reflection on concurrent learning in clinical and simulation experiences. OUTCOMES: Transformative learning was evident in their writing. Student journals demonstrated themes of responding to change, discovering resilience, developing confidence, finding gratitude, embracing advocacy, and transforming and becoming. CONCLUSIONS: Through critical reflection, students recognized the opportunities mentorship afforded them, despite challenges.

Engaging millennial learners: Effectiveness of personal response system technology with nursing students in small and large classrooms.

Nurse educators must explore innovative technologies that make the most of the characteristics and learning styles of millennial learners. These students are comfortable with technology and prefer interactive classrooms with individual feedback and peer collaboration. This study evaluated the perceived effectiveness of personal response system (PRS) technology in enhancing student learning in small and large classrooms. PRS technology was integrated into two undergraduate courses, nursing research (n = 33) and junior medical-surgical nursing (n = 116). Multiple-choice, true-false, NCLEX-RN alternate format, and reading quiz questions were incorporated within didactic PowerPoint presentations. Data analysis of Likert-type and open-response questions supported the use of PRS technology as an effective strategy for educating millennial learners in both small and large classrooms. PRS technology promotes active learning, increases participation, and provides students and faculty with immediate feedback that reflects comprehension of content and increases faculty-student interaction.

Knowledge for the good of the individual and society: linking philosophy, disciplinary goals, theory, and practice.

Nursing as a profession has a social mandate to contribute to the good of society through knowledge-based practice. Knowledge is built upon theories, and theories, together with their philosophical bases and disciplinary goals, are the guiding frameworks for practice. This article explores a philosophical perspective of nursing's social mandate, the disciplinary goals for the good of the individual and society, and one approach for translating knowledge into practice through the use of a middle-range theory. It is anticipated that the integration of the philosophical perspective and model into nursing practice will strengthen the philosophy, disciplinary goal, theory, and practice links and expand knowledge within the discipline. With the focus on humanization, we propose that nursing knowledge for social good will embrace a synthesis of the individual and the common good. This approach converges vital and agency needs described by Hamilton and the primacy of maintaining the heritage of the good within the human species as outlined by Maritain. Further, by embedding knowledge development in a changing social and health care context, nursing focuses on the goals of clinical reasoning and action. McCubbin and Patterson's Double ABCX Model of Family Adaptation was used as an example of a theory that can guide practice at the community and global level. Using the theory-practice link as a foundation, the Double ABCX model provides practising nurses with one approach to meet the needs of individuals and society. The integration of theory into nursing practice provides a guide to achieve nursing's disciplinary goals of promoting health and preventing illness across the globe. When nursing goals are directed at the synthesis of the good of the individual and society, nursing's social and moral mandate may be achieved.