Clinical Immersion: An Approach for Fostering Cross-disciplinary Communication and Innovation in Nursing and Engineering Students.

BACKGROUND: A faculty team from nursing and chemical engineering developed a course that brought together students from each discipline for cross-disciplinary, team-based clinical immersion and collaboration. PROBLEM: Health care processes and devices are rapidly changing, and nurses are uniquely positioned to be bedside innovators to improve patient care delivery. APPROACH: During each clinical immersion, the student teams rotated through various hospital units where they identified problems and worked together in the university's makerspace (iMaker Space) to design and build prototypes to improve health outcomes. OUTCOMES: Data from the Critical thinking Assessment Test provided evidence of gains in critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, while the problems identified in the clinical setting and prototypes developed demonstrated the impact of bringing nursing and engineering students together to design innovations. CONCLUSIONS: When challenged to identify authentic problems during their clinical immersion, the teams of nursing and engineering students proposed creative solutions and developed commercially viable prototypes.

Evolving role of pediatric nurse practitioners.

PURPOSE: To report and interpret findings from national pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) job analysis surveys reflecting the changes in the knowledge and skills required for advanced practice. DATA SOURCES: National role delineation studies (RDS) conducted by American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) in 2003, 2008, and 2011. CONCLUSIONS: Since the first nurse practitioner (NP) program was established in 1965 to train pediatric nurses for advanced practice, the role of the PNP has continued to develop. The RDS results demonstrate the increased autonomy of PNP's prescription of medication as the top work activity category identified, followed by the reporting of suspected abuse, exploitation, and/or neglect and immunizing based on current recommendations. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Analysis of the changes in role or work activities, tied to the knowledge and skills required to perform those activities, can provide content for educators updating curriculum, for clinicians to remain current in their practice and impact healthcare policy. The current PNP role has evolved to meet the workforce demands of providing primary care to the pediatric population with increasing complex social and healthcare needs. Role analysis is important as NPs move forward to practice to the full extent of their education and training.

Flipped Versus Traditional Instruction and Achievement in a Baccalaureate Nursing Pharmacology Course.

: The researchers used a quantitative pretest-posttest nonequivalent control group quasi-experimental design to determine if there is a significant difference in content knowledge acquisition between traditional and flipped classroom methods. Analysis revealed that the flipped classroom approach was significantly different for three unit exams. The results did not show a significant difference in the means for the final exam. Knowledge gains on tests and students' positive responses support the use of the flipped classroom method.

SAFETY: an integrated clinical reasoning and reflection framework for undergraduate nursing students.

Nurse educators can no longer focus on imparting to students knowledge that is merely factual and content specific. Activities that provide students with opportunities to apply concepts in real-world scenarios can be powerful tools. Nurse educators should take advantage of student-patient interactions to model clinical reasoning and allow students to practice complex decision making throughout the entire curriculum. In response to this change in nursing education, faculty in a pediatric course designed a reflective clinical reasoning activity based on the SAFETY template, which is derived from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing RN practice analysis. Students were able to prioritize key components of nursing care, as well as integrate practice issues such as delegation, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act violations, and questioning the accuracy of orders. SAFETY is proposed as a framework for integration of content knowledge, clinical reasoning, and reflection on authentic professional nursing concerns.