The clinical nurse specialist plays a valuable role in program development, implementation, and evaluation to achieve quality healthcare through interdisciplinary collaboration. Adhering to nutrition guidelines for the hospitalized adult patient improves nutrition care plan guidance and meal intake.
Animal-assisted activities (AAAs) show promise in providing emotional and social benefits to older adults and may be used as a tool to promote therapeutic communication between students and cognitively impaired older adults. The purpose was to develop a program incorporating AAAs to enhance social engagement of cognitively impaired older adults in a community respite program and in turn enhance student comfort when caring for this vulnerable population. The Dementia Attitudes Scale, a validated tool, was used to measure students' attitudes before and after AAA intervention. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures analysis of variance. Students were significantly more comfortable and demonstrated a gain in knowledge after AAAs were included in the community clinical experience. Incorporating AAAs into student community/service-learning clinical experience improved communication between students and cognitively impaired older adults, improving students' attitudes when caring for this population.
As the North American population of older adults increases, so does the need for nursing students to gain skills in geriatric care. Locating appropriate clinical sites for undergraduate students, including community and health promotion opportunities, prompted a public university's school of nursing to partner with a faith-based respite program. The collaboration between a public educational institution and a church-based program benefited the geriatric participants, the program leadership, and the nursing students and faculty.
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