The results of this study make it imperative for nursing schools to consider including reflective writing-especially assignments based on Paul's (1993) model-in nursing courses. If future studies, testing over longer periods of time, show significant increases in critical thinking, those interventions could be incorporated into nursing curriculum and change the way nurse educators evaluate students.
This study sought to identify characteristics of clinically situated critical thinking in nursing students' reflections, originally part of a study guided by Richard Paul's model of critical thinking. Nurses are expected to apply critical thinking in all practice situations to improve health outcomes, including patient safety and satisfaction. In a previous study, Paul's model of critical thinking was used to develop questions for reflective writing assignments. Within that study, 30 nursing students completed six open-ended narratives of nurse-patient clinical encounters during an 8-week period. Improvements were seen in critical thinking scores after the intervention. This article reports the qualitative analysis of the content of six open-ended narratives. Six overarching themes were identified and combined into a tentative conceptual model. Faculty's understanding of the characteristics of critical thinking in the context of clinical education will help them to teach and evaluate students' progress and competencies for future practice.
Each year, more than 300,000 American students have an international experience to earn academic credit on a variety of programs ranging from two weeks to a full academic year. Education Abroad (EA) enables students to “experience new perspectives, learn how to navigate different cultures, work with diverse peers, and communicate in other languages” [1]. In nursing, studying abroad has been shown to help with cultural awareness, personal growth, cultural immersion, and networking. EA opportunities help nursing students to gain “diverse cultural perspectives, as well as global competence” [2] in a world where they will be providing care for an increasingly diverse population.
At a mid-size university in the American South, an associate professor in nursing who has previous EA experience, became interested in a health-related concept known as the Blue Zones, described below. She realized that this particular research area of interest could be applied to an opportunity for a health-related study abroad program for nursing students and other college students interested in the concept. In this article, the authors will describe the concept of Blue Zones, how an EA program focusing on the concept was developed, what was involved in the course connected with the program, and details of the experience.
Background: Due to the constantly changing environment in healthcare, nurses must be able to adjust their techniques, mind-set, and strategies to provide excellent care for their patients. Nurses are required to have the necessary skills to assess critically ill patients, provide emergent care, and identify subtle changes in health status; therefore, nurse educators must possess knowledge on current evidence-based methods that improve critical thinking and utilize active learning. The flipped classroom is a strategy that has been introduced in nursing education; however there is a shortage of empirical research regarding flipped classrooms and a lack of information and congruency about this educational strategy.
Methods:The authors investigated the effectiveness, benefits, and limitations involved with the implementation of the flipped classroom through previous studies and articles. Additionally, they distributed a questionnaire to students and faculty members to determine their opinions about the flipped classroom technique.Results: Many benefits and limitations of flipped classrooms were identified through this study.
Conclusion:This information will be valuable for nursing educators in determining if they want to implement flipped classrooms, how to best define a flipped classroom, how to incorporate the strategy, and what obstacles to be aware of.
Rubrics have been used as guides to establish and communicate standards to students when developing a paper or project. The standards set by the rubric assure course objectives are met and nursing standards of practice are integrated. This article will detail the necessary components of the rubric for written nursing assignments, both didactic and clinical. In addition, the importance of using rubrics will be emphasized. The issues associated with developing and utilizing rubrics in nursing education will be described and discussed. The development of a specific school of nursing rubric will be detailed.
Providing culturally competent health care is a growing need as the population of culturally diverse women continues to rise. Compilation of a multilingual resource manual about maternal-child and women's health topics that can be used by health educators to provide care to non-English-speaking and limited English proficiency (LEP) clients was achieved to address this need. In this article, significant details of this process are described allowing the reader to produce a similar version of the manual.
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