Strategies to encourage participation in debrief sessions with nursing students for whom English is an additional language: A qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: End-of-day debriefs are reported to offer students opportunities to reflect and consolidate learning. However, there is little evidence about how clinical facilitators encourage student participation that leads to refection and learning, particularly in debrief sessions with linguistically diverse students. AIM: This research investigated how the pedagogic practices of clinical facilitators enabled or constrained student participation during debrief. DESIGN: This study used an ethnographic approach combined with linguistic analysis of audio recordings of debrief in two metropolitan hospitals in Australia. RESULTS: The study found that several key factors contributed to student participation during debrief. Factors included: establishing a space that offered visual and aural privacy; using strategies that encouraged student talk; and adopting roles of expert teacher, facilitator, clinical expert, and therapeutic agent. CONCLUSION: Conducting debrief in appropriate settings and adopting strategies and roles that encourage student talk can lead to opportunities for students to reflect on their day, and for facilitators to make judgements about students' knowledge. IMPACT: Facilitators can enable student participation by using spaces that offer physical and aural privacy for debrief, focusing on knowledge within students' scope of practice, and using communication strategies that encourage talk.

Development and implementation of the Bachelor of Nursing (Conversion) course in Vanuatu.

CONTEXT: Vanuatu, a Pacific Island nation in the Western Pacific region, has to date educated its nurses by diploma program. Research evidence in developed countries has consistently shown that nurses educated by bachelor degree improve patient health outcomes and reduce hospital length of stay. In seeking to improve health outcomes, the Vanuatu Ministry of Health decided to introduce a new Bachelor of Nursing degree to provide a skilled, safe nursing workforce for the provision of health care to its peoples{1-3}. The curriculum for this degree was to be developed by Ni-Vanuatu nurse educators with the collaboration of educators from the WHO Collaborating Centre, University of Technology Sydney. However, it was first necessary to upgrade (from diploma to bachelor level) the qualifications of teachers and senior nursing practitioners who would lead the new degree course by introducing a Bachelor of Nursing (Conversion) course. ISSUES: In order to design and implement a Bachelor of Nursing (Conversion) course that would be relevant for the educational and healthcare context in Vanuatu and that would meet qualification requirements of the local regulatory bodies, it was essential to build collaborative relationships with key stakeholders in Vanuatu. A second key concern was to design a program that would cater for participants who were working full time, who were not all living in the same physical location, and who had limited access to internet technology and resources. The course also needed to take into account that participants were multilingual, and that English was not their first language. LESSONS LEARNED: Lessons learned included the importance of coming to understand the sociocultural nexus within which this course was developed and implemented, as well as appreciating the constraints that affect nursing education within the Pacific.

Professional development for teachers of nursing students for whom English is an additional language: A reflection on practices.

The increasing linguistically and culturally diverse cohort of university students in nursing degree programmes has resulted in a plethora of approaches to address issues related to English language, academic writing and professional communication. Approaches that integrate language development within core nursing subjects are usually regarded as effective, as they offer students opportunities to be socialised into the language of their specific discipline areas. However, developing and implementing an integrated model can be challenging and many discipline academics feel unprepared to address language issues within the curriculum. This paper discusses a pilot project where we, a language academic and a group of nursing academics, adopted a clinical supervision model to problematise subject content and pedagogic practices. The aim was to enable English as additional language students better transition to Australian university studies by integrating an explicit focus on language development within the subject content. The paper outlines the model and draws on our reflections to discuss outcomes. These included changes to subject content and pedagogic practices, as well as increased confidence of nursing academics to teach in ways that have been found to be effective for English as additional language students.

The effects of clinical facilitators' pedagogic practices on learning opportunities for students who speak English as an additional language: An ethnographic study.

BACKGROUND: Increasing numbers of undergraduate nursing students speak English as an additional language. Clinical placements can be difficult for many of these students and their clinical facilitators. The causes of challenges are often reported to be students' lack of English language ability or, for some students, learning styles that are not suited to Western style education. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this research was to investigate how clinical facilitators' pedagogic practices in hospital settings enabled or constrained the learning of students for whom English was an additional language. METHOD: This research used an ethnographic design to observe the interactions of twenty-one first year students for whom English is an additional language, and their three facilitators. Observations occurred during three two-week clinical placement blocks, in three large metropolitan hospitals in Australia. Written ethnographic field notes were made during the observations. Field notes were analysed in two stages: firstly, to identify major themes, and secondly, to map the spaces and activities where facilitators and students interacted. RESULTS: The study found that there were multiple learning spaces in the hospitals, each of which was associated with particular learning activities between facilitators and students. These activities provided access to opportunities for learning core nursing skills, as well as for socialisation into the language of nursing. However, not all students had access to these opportunities. The pedagogic practices facilitators used created or constrained learning opportunities for students. CONCLUSION: This paper proposes a new way of thinking about the supervision of students for whom English is an additional language in clinical settings. Rather than focusing on a lack of English language proficiency or cultural heritage factors, it proposes that a guided approach to using spaces and activities can maximise students' opportunities for learning.