Improving Patient and Caregiver New Medication Education Using an Innovative Teach-back Toolkit.

BACKGROUND: Patients and caregivers are often not adequately informed about new medications. Nurses can lead innovations that improve new medication education. LOCAL PROBLEM: Healthcare Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores on medication questions trailed state and national levels in one Midwestern hospital. METHODS: This quality improvement project, guided by the Ottawa Model of Research Use and the Always Use Teach-back! innovative toolkit, used a 1-group pre- and posteducation design with RNs, patients, and caregivers. INTERVENTION: RNs (n = 25) were observed in patient/caregiver education and surveyed in confidence/con-viction in the teach-back method before and after education. Patients' (n = 74) and caregivers' (n = 33) knowledge was assessed. RESULTS: RNs reported significant increases in conviction in the importance of (P < .0001), confidence in using (P < .0001), and frequency in using (P < .0001) teach-back. With teach-back, both patients and caregivers recalled the purpose and side effects of new medications. Specific HCAHPS scores increased from 6% to 10%. CONCLUSION: The teach-back method strengthened safe nursing practice and enhanced quality in new medication education.

The Collaborative Improvement Model: An Interpretive Study of Revising a Curriculum.

Curriculum revisions in nursing programs are necessary to maintain currency and ensure that nursing students are prepared to competently practice nursing. Yet, the research for curriculum revisions in nursing education is sparse, leaving nursing educators with a thin evidence base upon which to revise curricula. The purpose of this phenomenological and hermeneutical study was to understand the experiences of faculty members and students who used the Collaborative Improvement Model (CIM) at a midwestern nursing department as an approach to revise their curriculum. The findings of this study demonstrate how the CIM (a) promoted student involvement in revising a curriculum, (b) facilitated faculty collaboration across two campuses with different campus cultures, (c) encouraged the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and (d) emphasized the need to use external facilitators when revising a curriculum. Faculty members in nursing programs can use this study when considering the CIM as a framework for revising their curricula.

An interpretive study of nursing students' experiences of caring for suicidal persons.

Suicide is a worldwide public health problem. Although preparing nursing students to care for suicidal persons has been a standard part of nursing education for many years, nurses consistently report that they lack competencies in caring for this population of patients. The purpose of this phenomenological and hermeneutical study was to understand the experiences undergraduate nursing students had in regard to caring for suicidal persons. The aim of the study was to obtain insights into the basic preparation of students in the care of suicidal persons to inform pedagogical approaches pertaining to suicide and improve the nursing care for these individuals. Twelve senior nursing students were recruited for the study. Data were collected using in-depth, unstructured interviews. The study themes indicated that (a) when participants read about suicidal persons' mental status and behavior in patient, records they initially feared interacting with and caring for these individuals; (b) participants' abilities to gather information about suicide risk was influenced by how much patients talked with them about their suicidal tendencies; and (c) participants' capacity to provide safe and therapeutic suicide prevention interventions was impacted by judicious critical thinking skills. Teaching strategies that align with the themes are provided.

Cultivating interpretive thinking through enacting narrative pedagogy.

Teachers and educational researchers in nursing have persisted in their attempts to teach students critical thinking and to evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts. Yet, despite the plethora of studies investigating critical thinking, there is a paucity of research providing evidence that teachers' efforts improve students' thinking. The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological study is to explicate how students' thinking can be extended when teachers use Narrative Pedagogy. Specifically, the theme Cultivating Interpretive Thinking refers to how teachers' use of Narrative Pedagogy moves beyond the critical thinking movement's emphasis on analytical thinking (i.e., problem solving). Cultivating Interpretive Thinking offers an innovative approach for teaching and learning thinking that attends to students' embodied, reflective, and pluralistic thinking experiences. Teachers who cultivate interpretive thinking add complexity to students' thinking to better prepare them for challenging, complex, and unpredictable clinical environments.