The Art of Discharge Planning: Teaching Nursing Students to Address Disparities Through Simulation.

Background: Discharge planning is crucial to ensuring that patients' care and recovery needs are addressed. A new nurse graduate must be prepared to enter a clinical practice environment in which hospitals face penalties for patient readmissions. Methods: Student nurses were assigned simulated patients with a variety of health disparities and health-care diagnoses to address. A qualitative research design evaluated student perceptions of discharge planning and cultural competency. Results: Students found the simulation to be vital to their clinical experience. Students were able to develop discharge teaching that was culturally congruent for each simulated patient. Conclusions: Incorporating discharge teaching simulation into the nursing curriculum can positively impact students' ability to transition to clinical practice and build confidence in a skill that is rarely incorporated into nursing curricula.

Implementation of a Standardized Evaluation Tool to Improve Preceptor Confidence.

Preceptors guide the transition of new graduate nurses into practice. Having access to evidence-based tools for evaluation of new graduate nurses promotes preceptor confidence and consistent measures of performance. The Norwegian Nurse Competence Scale was implemented across three acute care organizations for evaluation of new graduate nurse performance. After implementing a standardized process to evaluate new graduate nurses, individual summary scores ranged from 17-25 (preintervention) to 20-25 (postintervention), indicating mid to high levels of preceptor confidence.