Social justice as an expression of caring through holistic admissions in a nursing program: A proposed conceptual model.

AIM: This paper presents HAR as an expression of caring to create social justice within nursing and achieve a workforce that is representative of those being served. BACKGROUND: The lack of diversity within the health professions has been expressly linked in the literature to health disparities among underrepresented and marginalized groups. RECOMMENDATIONS: Recognizing the value of diversity within healthcare has been the impetus for some health profession programs to use holistic admissions review (HAR) in the assessment and evaluation of applicant suitability. While current HAR recommendations in nursing broaden the lens on which criteria should be used to determine applicant suitability beyond standard academic metrics, existing models do not examine applicants' caring capacity. CONCLUSION: Given caring is the essence of nursing, the authors offer a guiding framework to supplement the American Association of Colleges of Nursing criteria for HAR and a model by which nursing applicants are evaluated on their capacity to care.

Student Immersion in Perioperative Nursing.

The aging workforce and the lack of perioperative clinical practice and theoretical content in nursing education programs are factors contributing to the perioperative nursing shortage. This article discusses the implementation of a creatively designed perioperative program, which includes a didactic course and a 210-hour clinical course, developed by the faculty members of a Michigan school of nursing in collaboration with administrators at area hospitals. The didactic content covers materials presented during the first three months of orientation for newly employed perioperative nurses. Interested baccalaureate nursing students in their senior year are selected to participate in the program after being interviewed by hospital personnel and university faculty members. To date, the program has 18 student graduates in two semesters; all have been offered positions in the perioperative setting, and 14 have accepted positions. The active learning strategies used in the course are described with examples.