A Poverty Simulation's Impact on Nursing and Social Work Students' Attitudes Towards Poverty and Health.

BACKGROUND: Currently, about 40 million people in the United States live in poverty, one of the most significant social determinants of health. Nurses and social workers must understand the effect of living in poverty on their clients' health and quality of life. PURPOSE: Nurses and social workers will encounter persons living in poverty. Therefore, beginning in their undergraduate education, health professions students must be aware of their attitudes towards poverty and how poverty affects health. METHODS: The Community Action Poverty Simulation was conducted with nursing and social work students at a small liberal arts institution. The Attitudes toward Poverty-Short Form (ATP-SF) and Beliefs Related to Poverty and Health (BRPH) tools were used pre- and postsimulation to assess students' attitudes about poverty and beliefs about the relationship between poverty and health. An emotional response plan was created to address participants' emotional responses by providing a separate space on-site and information about future resources. RESULTS: The ATP-SF showed a significant overall difference (p < .001) between pre- and postsimulation surveys, indicating a shift toward a structural explanation of poverty; the BRPH showed that participants believed poverty is the result of illness and inability to work (p < .01). CONCLUSION: This study supports poverty simulation use to promote awareness of attitudes towards those living in poverty and how poverty impacts health. Recommendations include using more community resource volunteers with first-hand poverty experience, allowing students to role-play adults or older teens in the simulation, and including other health professions students.

Guide to Implementing a Student- and Faculty-Led Interprofessional Poverty Simulation.

Abundant evidence supports the benefits of simulated learning. Simulations enhance students' communication and teamwork skills and expose students to situations they may not experience in clinical rotations. More specifically, research has confirmed the benefit of conducting poverty simulations with nursing and social work students from financially privileged backgrounds; these students demonstrated an enhanced structural understanding of poverty over a behavioral understanding, following simulated experiences (Noone, Sideras, Gubrud-Howe, Voss, & Mathews, 2012). This article describes the process of planning and implementing a poverty simulation.

Implementation of the TeamSTEPPS Curriculum With Baccalaureate Nursing and Social Work Students Utilizing Student Trainers: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study.

Nursing and social work education programs are seeking innovative ways to prepare students to function as collaborative members of interprofessional teams upon graduation. Communication is a key linked to a decrease in medical errors, which compromise patient safety. In response to nursing students' concerns about clinical experiences in which they had witnessed poor communication with the potential to jeopardize patient care, faculty members identified a communication skills training program designed to improve team performance. Senior nursing and social work students at the beginning of their last semester of school were trained in selected modules of the Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) training program and subsequently trained their student colleagues. The goal was to emphasize communication skills and strategies in a sustainable student trainer model. Qualitative and quantitative data about participant experiences revealed significant improvement in teamwork attitudes and communication skills following the training.