Incorporating the AACN Essentials 'spheres of care' into nursing curricula.

In 2021 the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) published new education standards for nursing programs offering degrees at the baccalaureate-level and higher. The new standards, The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education (AACN, 2021), represent an educational shift and an opportunity to transform the nursing profession through a better-prepared workforce. One important new standard that must be incorporated for entry-level (Level 1) programs is preparation for practice within four spheres of care. This article will provide clarity and context to the concept of "spheres of care" with suggestions regarding ways to incorporate this educational expectation within the curriculum.

A New Era for Nursing Education: Implications for Practice.

With the release of The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education, nurse educators and practice leaders are transforming how nurses are prepared to meet current and future practice expectations. Working together using a competency-based approach to education, academic-practice partners are redefining entry- and advanced-level nursing education, including new approaches to clinical experiences and competency assessment. This monumental shift will help clarify what new nurses are prepared to do while enhancing their practice readiness.

Enhancing learning in an online doctoral course through a virtual community platform.

Great teaching engages learners. Creating an online course that is engaging to learners requires substantial planning and creativity. In developing a new online course for doctoral students in nursing (DNP and PhD) and in other health science disciplines, we were interested in creating an application that would 1) support narrative pedagogy, 2) support highly engaging, student-centered learning, and 3) require learners to apply content within real-world experiences. In order to support such learning and achieve these goals, we created a virtual community platform. This paper reports on the development and implementation of a new type of virtual community platform to support teaching and learning in an online, doctoral-level course, specifically designed for nurses and other healthcare clinicians transitioning to a faculty role.

Evaluation of an interprofessional care coordination model: Benefits to health professions students and the community served.

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: An innovative care coordination program was developed to enhance wellness among low-income older adults living in subsidized apartment buildings and to provide rich interprofessional education experiences for health professions students. METHODS: Program effectiveness for the residents was measured through an evaluation of participation, services used, and healthcare utilization. Educational effectiveness was measured through a change in health concepts and perceptions of interprofessional practice. FINDINGS: Health care utilization among participating residents showed an 8.6% reduction in emergency department visits and 9.8% reduction in hospital admissions. Students demonstrated improved knowledge in motivational interviewing (p = .02); diabetes (p = .02); hypertension (p≤.01); and frailty (p≤.01). Changes in students perception of interprofessional practice were significant in two areas; Teamwork and Collaboration (p≥.00); and Person Centeredness (p = .00). DISCUSSION: This care coordination model may be an effective approach to reduce care resource utilization among medically complex lower income older adults and provides a rich interprofessional learning experience for students.

Emerging From the COVID-19 Crisis With a Stronger Health Care Workforce.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the limitations of the current health care workforce. As health care workers across the globe have been overwhelmed by the crisis, oversight entities and training programs have sought to loosen regulations to support ongoing care. Notably, however, workforce challenges preceded the current crisis. Now may be the time to address these underlying workforce challenges and emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic with a stronger health care workforce.Building upon historical exemplars in the context of the current crisis, the authors of this Perspective provide a roadmap to rapidly and safely increase the workforce for COVID-19 and beyond. The authors recommend the following: (1) a comprehensive approach to guide health care workforce development, (2) streamlining transitions to the next level of practice, (3) reciprocity among state licensing boards or national licensure, (4) payment reform to support a strengthened health care workforce, and (5) efforts by employers to ensure the ongoing safety and competence of the bolstered workforce. These steps require urgent collaboration among stakeholders commensurate with the acuity of the pandemic. Implemented together, these actions could address not only the novel challenges presented by COVID-19 but also the underlying inadequacies of the health care workforce that must be remedied to create a healthier society.

Transformational leadership: What every nursing dean should know.

Transformational leadership (TFL) has become a predominant leadership style practiced by leaders across many industries and disciplines, including nursing. As a component of the Full Range Leadership Model proposed by Bass (1985), TFL is characterized by the ability to stimulate, inspire, and motivate followers. Transformational leaders focus on building relationships with people and creating change by emphasizing values. Most TFL literature in nursing focuses on clinical practice with very little representation from academic nursing leadership. This article describes TFL, presents general findings from the literature, discusses this leadership style in the context of academic nursing leadership, makes recommendations for professional development of this leadership approach and offers suggests for future inquiry.

Pearls of wisdom for chief academic nursing leaders.

There is a significant shortage of executive leadership in nursing academia with large numbers of deans have retired and many more are expected in the upcoming years (AACN, 2015). This has resulted in a steady upward trend of nursing schools reporting a change in deans over the past 5 years; many of the changes in academic nursing leadership involve deans who are new to the role. The role expectations of chief academic nursing leaders are very complex and for which few new leaders are completely prepared. This article describes the role and competencies of the chief academic nursing leader and presents "pearls" for success for new leaders assuming this role.

Foundational Courses for the Baccalaureate Nursing Degree: Enhancing Efficiency for Academic Progression.

BACKGROUND: The Institute of Medicine recommendation for a more educated nursing workforce has triggered significant activity in the area of academic profession, particularly in pre- and postlicensure baccalaureate nursing education. Many innovative academic progression models involving universities and community colleges have emerged. Among the most common barriers to this effort are inconsistent prerequisite course requirements. METHOD: A workgroup convened to discuss commonalities and differences of general education and prerequisite course work and propose core prerequisite coursework for the baccalaureate nursing degree. RESULTS: A course menu strategy for foundational baccalaureate nursing courses was proposed that includes four general course categories with credit ranges and common courses or content for each category. The four proposed foundational course categories are general education, basic sciences, social sciences, and human sciences. CONCLUSION: A need exists to reduce barriers affecting academic progression. The foundational course approach proposed has potential to reduce some of these barriers. [J Nurs Educ. 2016;55(7):373-378.].

Answering the Call for a Bachelors-Prepared Nursing Workforce: An Innovative Model for Academic Progression.

Forces that have produced national reform of a fragmented, inefficient, and expensive health care services sector have also set the stage for reform of a fragmented, inefficient, and expensive system for nursing education. Changes in health care, health policy, education policy, and funding for public higher education have led to the development of new nursing education models designed to increase the number of baccalaureate-prepared nurses entering the workforce. This article describes the development and implementation of one such model that features a common concept-based curriculum and university-community college partnerships at its core. This plan increases access for nursing students across the state to earn a prelicensure bachelor of science in nursing degree and preserves the integrity and accessibility of associate degree nursing education.

Re-envisioning clinical education for nurse practitioner programs: themes from a national leaders' dialogue.

As the need for primary care providers increases, nursing education programs face significant challenges to meet future workforce needs. A more resource-efficient approach for the clinical education of nurse practitioner students is needed. A think tank involving 20 thought leaders representing multiple disciplines was convened to discuss this issue. This article presents seven themes that emerged from this national leaders' dialog: academic practice co-design, standardized preclinical preparation, standardized student assessment, entrustable professional activities, immersive clinical experiences, interprofessional education for team-based care, and innovative education practices.

Lessons learned in multisite, nursing education research while studying a technology learning innovation.

Multiple challenges must be addressed when educational research is being conducted that involves a teaching innovation at multiple sites over time, including the consistent adoption and use of the intervention, attrition, response rates, and other aspects related to managing a complex study. After an 18-month nursing education study was conducted at multiple institutions across the United States, the authors' study team reflected on strategies that worked well, the challenges faced, and what could have been done differently. This article details the challenges and offers recommendations for other researchers conducting similar studies. Recommendations related to communication and engagement, innovation fidelity, survey fatigue, multiple institutional review board applications, and flexibility are provided.

The perceived benefits of a virtual community: effects of learning style, race, ethnicity, and frequency of use on nursing students.

BACKGROUND: It is important for nursing faculty to consider the variability in learning style among nursing students. AIM: The researchers sought to compare differences in perceived learning benefits among nursing students who had different learning styles and in frequency of use of a virtual community learning intervention. METHOD Using a comparative approach, learning style was measured with the Kolb Learning Style Inventory. Frequency of use and benefit were measured with an exit survey. RESULTS: No differences in perceived benefit were found according to learning style. Subjects with frequent use of the virtual community reported significantly greater learning benefits than those with infrequent use, regardless of learning style. Also found was a statistically significant relationship between Kolb learning-style scores and race or ethnicity. CONCLUSION: All nursing students may potentially benefit from virtual community use.

The impact of a virtual community on student engagement and academic performance among baccalaureate nursing students.

The purpose of this article is to present findings from a study which evaluated the effectiveness of a virtual community (an emerging pedagogical application) on student engagement and academic performance. Virtual communities mirror real-life through unfolding patient histories and relationship development over time. Students also become more engaged in learning by creating personally meaningful knowledge of a concept (Rogers & Stone, 2007). Virtual communities offer one teaching strategy to assist students in learning complex, health-related content in a contextualized manner. This quasi-experimental study involved first-semester baccalaureate nursing students enrolled in a course at two campuses of a nursing program at a large university in the Southwest. Three key strategies assessed the impact of the virtual community on student engagement and learning: third-party observational measurement, end-of-class student/faculty surveys, and use of knowledge items in student exams for the class. Significant differences between the control and experimental group were found regarding learning engagement and communication exchanges; the groups appeared similar in ratings of quality of instruction and academic performance. Use of virtual communities can help nursing educators address the recent Carnegie Foundation study's (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard & Day, 2010) counsel to implement "pedagogies of contextualization" in which theoretical and factual information about diseases and conditions are placed in the context of a patient's experience.

Selecting concepts for a concept-based curriculum: application of a benchmark approach.

In response to a transformational movement in nursing education, faculty across the country are considering changes to curricula and approaches to teaching. As a result, an emerging trend in many nursing programs is the adoption of a concept-based curriculum. As part of the curriculum development process, the selection of concepts, competencies, and exemplars on which to build courses and base content is needed. This article presents a benchmark approach used to validate and finalize concept selection among educators developing a concept-based curriculum for a statewide nursing consortium. These findings are intended to inform other nurse educators who are currently involved with or are considering this curriculum approach.