Research, Practice and Teaching United: Implementing AACN Academic Guidelines in a Community Based Behavioral Health Setting.

The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education (2021) published by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing encourages bridging the gap between education and practice and continues to support the importance of providing clinical educational experiences in diverse settings. Another AACN document, Defining Scholarship for Academic Nursing Task Force Consensus Position Statement (2018), strongly encourages nursing faculty to engage in scholarship, a tradition that is integral to academic positions. This article demonstrates how these two important documents, one aimed at student competencies and curriculum and the other at nursing faculty development, can be connected to the mutual benefit of faculty and students alike. By revisiting Boyer's model of scholarship, the authors offer a new look at the integration of experiential learning that includes clinical practice, research, and competency-based education. The case study demonstrates that students and faculty can meet the tripartite mission of nursing education by creatively engaging in a community-based setting where they actively participate in all three pillars of academic nursing.

Covid 19: A community based nursing disaster response.

Nursing has been criticized for inconsistent and episodic attention to disaster response training in academic settings. The work described herein demonstrates that nursing was not only prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic but was able to mobilize and lead a large-scale response that benefited a university community and the larger surrounding communities and neighborhoods paying particular attention to marginalized populations. For healthcare providers outside of hospitals, it was clear that disaster response methods would need to be implemented. The authors demonstrate that nursing established an on-the-ground response in collaboration with other University officials and departments. Initially established for the University community, the response was moved into surrounding neighborhoods vaccinating the city's most vulnerable. The nurse led effort answered more than 25,000 Hotline telephone calls, collected more than 30,000 COVID-19 molecular tests, and administered more than 150,000 COVID-19 vaccines in an operation that served up to 2500 people a day for 5 months. Nurses saved thousands of lives at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in hospitals and in community-based settings. The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio School of Nursing demonstrated the nimble nature of academic nursing and outlines a large-scale community response to an international pandemic in the seventh-largest United States city. The authors establish guidelines for nurses and others to follow for future events.

Development of A Patient-Nurse Trust Scale in Underserved Community Setting.

This study developed and evaluated an instrument to measure the patient-nurse trust relationship in a medically underserved community. An exploratory sequential design was employed. In-depth interviews with 20 patients and 15 nurses were conducted to elicit their experiences regarding trust. Interview results were coded, analyzed and formatted into a Likert scale instrument. The instrument was administered to 120 patients. 19 items were retained for the final instrument with item-to-total correlational coefficients greater than 0.5, and a Cronbach's alpha of 0.95. Both construct validity and preliminary criterion validity were confirmed. Psychometric proportions of the instrument were established.

Evolution of Experiential Learning Opportunities for Nursing Students After Natural Disaster.

BACKGROUND: Natural disasters, such as Hurricane Harvey, can provide unique hands-on learning experiences for nursing students. METHOD: The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio School of Nursing deployed teams of faculty and students to Rockport, Texas, two to three times per week to provide post-disaster relief following Hurricane Harvey. Each team included a minimum of 10 students and two faculty to provide primary care, prevention, and door-to-door canvassing. Nursing students provided physical examinations, urgent care, vaccines, first aid training, and education. RESULTS: Across 6 months and more than 60 trips, over 200 students (supervised by 12 faculty) successfully delivered care to Rockport residents. This learning experience was invaluable for the nursing students, who expressed that "I felt like a real nurse" and "This is the best experience I have had since I decided to become a nurse." CONCLUSION: This intervention highlights the potential of disaster relief as a unique hands-on educational experience for nursing students. [J Nurs Educ. 2020;59(1):30-33.].

"We didn't forget" Utilizing a Community-Nurse Partnership to Promote Health in Rockport, Texas after Hurricane Harvey.

BACKGROUND: On August 25th 2017 Harvey, a category 4 hurricane, made landfall on the south coast of Texas with heavy winds and rain that severely damaged the seaside town of Rockport. The challenge facing healthcare providers following a natural disaster is timely assessments of community need and available resources. One week later, faculty at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, School of Nursing (SON) completed a community assessment and developed valuable partnerships. AIMS: Eighteen days after the initial assessment, faculty had secured support from The Children's Health Fund and operationalized strategies to provide disaster relief and experiential learning opportunities for the SON Population Focused Health undergraduate students. MATERIALS & METHODS: The community-as-partner model served as the framework to apply the nursing process to a community in crisis. As the focus shifted to recovery, the team prioritized the need to address long-term consequences for children after a natural disaster. RESULTS: Two educational sessions were designed using an interactive and instructional approach to discuss parental strategies to assess and support children as they navigated through loss after Harvey. DISCUSSION: This community-nurse partnership has endured, and the SON faculty and students continue to travel to Rockport to promote health and provide education to the community.

Community health workers recruitment from within: an inner-city neighborhood-driven framework.

BACKGROUND: Community health workers (CHWs) are frontline public health workers who are trusted members of and/or have an unusually close understanding of the community served (APHA 2009). Among other roles, they are effective in closing critical communication gap between healthcare providers and patients as they possess key abilities to overcome cultural barriers, minimize disparities, and maximize adherence to clinical directions. In previous descriptions of the selection of CHWs, the role of community is clearly emphasized, but residence in the community is not indicated. OBJECTIVE: We present an effective model of CHW selection by the community of members that reside in the community to be served. METHODS: We outlined and implemented necessary steps for recruiting CHWs from within their target neighborhood between years 2011 and 2013. The identified community was an "isolated" part of Newark, New Jersey comprised of approximately 3000 people residing in three publicly-funded housing developments. We utilized a community empowerment model and established a structure of self-governance in the community of interest. In all phases of identification and selection of CHWs, the Community Advisory Board (CAB) played a leading role. RESULTS: The process for the successful development of a CHW initiative in an urban setting begins with community/resident engagement and ends with employment of trained CHWs. The steps needed are: (1) community site identification; (2) resident engagement; (3) health needs assessment; (4) CHW identification and recruitment; and (5) training and employment of CHWs. Using an empowered community model, we successfully initiated CHW selection, training, and recruitment. Thirteen CHW candidates were selected and approved by the community. They entered a 10-week training program and ten CHWs completed the training. We employed these ten CHWs. CONCLUSIONS: These five steps emerged from a retrospective review of our CHW initiative. Residing in the community served has significant advantages and disadvantages. Community empowerment is critical in changing the health indices of marginalized communities.

The transformational role of nursing in health care reform.

Successful health care reform will require more than insuring 32 million additional Americans. It will demand that our expensive, hospital and provider-driven model of care adopt a community-driven wellness model that emphasizes disease prevention. Nursing is perfectly situated to lead this transformation. By educating students in ways that build on nursing's legacy of health promotion and disease prevention, nurse educators can prepare nursing students to partner with underserved communities to offer low-cost, prevention-based services that meet local needs. This article uses preliminary data from the Jordan & Harris Community Health Center in Newark, New Jersey, to demonstrate how nurses can serve as role models in microsystem health care, while still following the Institute of Medicine's recommendations for health care reform.