Teamwork and Coaching for Successful Manuscript Development by Nurse Faculty: A Novel Approach.

ABSTRACT: The current nurse faculty shortage warrants new models for both retaining faculty effectively and coaching new faculty efficiently. An approach for retaining faculty members through meeting publication review criteria while conserving senior faculty mentoring time is proposed. This article describes a successful manuscript development process using teamwork and coaching among faculty. The outcomes of this efficacious process - submission and acceptance of publishable manuscripts - are reported for two institutions: one is research intensive, and the other is teaching intensive. A noted outcome also includes ideas for future manuscript development process replication.

Use of Oxygen at the End of Life: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices in Wisconsin.

INTRODUCTION: Oxygen therapy for the management of breathlessness remains controversial and little information is available regarding the practice of using oxygen at end of life. Oxygen use in end-of-life care is increasingly being questioned, while the use of oxygen for routine "comfort care" at end of life continues. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of oxygen at the end of life and to understand its role in contemporary palliative care practice. METHODS: The project involved a survey to learn about medical facility practices regarding the use of oxygen at the end of life and attitudes and beliefs regarding these practices, specifically the opinion of whether or not oxygen prolongs the dying process at the end of life. Questionnaires were mailed to 42 directors, coordinators, or managers of palliative care services in hospitals throughout Wisconsin. Twenty-five surveys were returned for a response rate of 59.5%. RESULTS: Forty-three percent of respondents believed that oxygen use at the very end of life affects the timeline of natural death by prolonging the dying process. Ninety-six percent of the respondents' facilities had a standard "comfort care" protocol for end-of-life patients that offered oxygen, regardless of whether patients had breathlessness or not. Respondents cited reasons that staff might use oxygen for these patients: patient comfort, family request, emotional comfort of family, prolongation of life when that was a patient goal, emotional comfort of staff. Respondents also cited reasons that staff might not use oxygen for these patients: oxygen did not seem to bring comfort, oxygen was an irritant to patient, prolongation of natural death was not a patient/family goal, oxygen use did not add to the emotional comfort of patient/family/staff. CONCLUSION: Current practice on oxygen use in palliative care was identified and the information helps to determine how decisions are made regarding oxygen use. The research adds to palliative care practice knowledge and supports continuing research and dialogue on practice issues.

Use of Action Research in Nursing Education.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to describe action research in nursing education and to propose a definition of action research for providing guidelines for research proposals and criteria for assessing potential publications for nursing higher education. Methods. The first part of this project involved a search of the literature on action research in nursing higher education from 1994 to 2013. Searches were conducted in the CINAHL and MEDLINE databases. Applying the criteria identified, 80 publications were reviewed. The second part of the project involved a literature review of action research methodology from several disciplines to assist in assessing articles in this review. Results. This article summarizes the nursing higher education literature reviewed and provides processes and content related to four topic areas in nursing higher education. The descriptions assist researchers in learning more about the complexity of both the action research process and the varied outcomes. The literature review of action research in many disciplines along with the review of action research in higher education provided a framework for developing a nursing-education-centric definition of action research. Conclusions. Although guidelines for developing action research and criteria for publication are suggested, continued development of methods for synthesizing action research is recommended.

Embedding Research in Undergraduate Learning Opportunities.

As a means of promoting scholarship, faculty are increasingly including undergraduate nursing students as team members in faculty-led research projects. Research involvement is a high-impact educational practice that enhances student engagement and retention rates and enables the reflection and integration of learning. The purpose of this article is to describe the benefits and innovative ways of directly involving undergraduate nursing students in faculty-guided research projects. Case examples from four non-research-intensive nursing programs are presented to illustrate the benefits of undergraduate student research involvement to students, faculty, their communities, as well as the nursing profession. Student assistance in all phases of the research process, ranging from research question generation, literature reviews, methods development, and data collection and analysis, to presentations and manuscript publication, motivates and helps faculty progress with their research programs. Benefits also include the creation of effective learning experiences that build nursing knowledge and potentially contribute to community health.

Navigating Evidence-Based Practice Projects: The Faculty Role.

: An innovative way to facilitate evidence-based practice (EBP) learning and to get evidence into practice is through academic-clinical agency projects involving faculty, undergraduate students, and agency staff. The central role of the faculty is key to successful academic-clinical agency partnerships. Faculty navigate the often difficult process of focusing students and engaging busy staff through initiating, maintaining, and evaluating projects. Students learn valuable EBP skills, staff become engaged in EBP, and the projects are rated highly by agency administrators.

Part 1. Undergraduate nursing evidence-based practice education: envisioning the role of students.

Nursing educators have embraced the integration of evidence-based practice (EBP) into the nursing education curriculum in numerous ways. As this review of the nursing pedagogy literature demonstrates, most of these approaches built upon long-standing commitments to helping students understand the scientific research process, think critically, and develop the information literacy skills that will enable them to find the evidence that can inform their practice. Many reports in the nursing pedagogy literature recounted various strategies used to teach EBP to nursing students. Another category of nursing pedagogy articles discussed ways that EBP education can be suffused throughout the nursing school curriculum. Few educators, however, have envisioned students as having a role beyond that of the mere recipients of EBP education. Nonetheless, a small but growing number of nurse educators have begun to envision students as enablers of practice change in clinical settings. These innovators advocate a pedagogical paradigm that places students into socially meaningful partnerships with practicing nurses as a means to promote the uptake of EBP in clinical settings.

Part II. Empowering grassroots evidence-based practice: a curricular model to foster undergraduate student-enabled practice change.

This article presents evidence collected over the past 15 years that attests to the success of curricular innovations conducted to foster socially meaningful contact between nursing students and practicing nurses as a means to promote evidence-based practice (EBP). Action research data collected as these pedagogical strategies have evolved suggest that such student-staff partnerships offer promise not only to encourage commitment to EBP among nursing students but also to surmount most of the barriers that prevent the widespread diffusion of EBP among practicing nurses in clinical settings. Based upon our successful experiences with student-staff interactions, we propose a curricular model-the Student-Enabled Practice Change model-that suffuses the undergraduate nursing school curriculum with opportunities for nursing students to form meaningful partnerships with practicing nurses. The Student-Enabled Practice Change Curricular Model relocates the power to drive practice change to the grassroots level of students and practicing nurses.

Part III. Reenvisioning undergraduate nursing students as opinion leaders to diffuse evidence-based practice in clinical settings.

Rogers's claims about the importance of social networks to the diffusion of innovations are reviewed in light of efforts to promote evidence-based practice (EBP) among nursing students and practicing nurses. We argue that nursing educators can take more deliberate advantage of the essentially social nature of the diffusion process by devising opportunities for nursing students to form meaningful social interactions with practicing nurses. We recommend curricular reforms that reenvision undergraduate nursing students as opinion leaders throughout the curriculum. Rogers's theory predicts that such ongoing interactions between nursing students and practicing nurses will better integrate EBP among both populations.