Including Twitter as an assessed element for first-year nursing students was feasible, students think it worthwhile and other nursing schools should consider introducing it in the broader context of Digital Professionalism.
Introduction:There is international concern about retention of student nurses on undergraduate programmes. United Kingdom Higher Education Institutions are monitored on their attrition statistics and can be penalised financially, so they have an incentive to help students remain on their programmes beyond their moral duty to ensure students receive the best possible educational experience.Aims:to understand students’ and staff concerns about programmes and placements as part of developing our retention strategies.Design: This study reports qualitative data on retention and attrition collected as part of an action research study.Setting:One University School of Nursing and Midwifery in the South West of England.Participants:Staff, current third year and ex-student nurses from the adult field.Methods:Data were collected in focus groups, both face-to face and virtual, and individual telephone interviews. These were transcribed and subjected to qualitative content analysis.Results:Four themes emerged: Academic support, Placements and mentors, Stresses and the reality of nursing life, and Dreams for a better programme.Conclusions:The themes Academic support, Placements and mentors and Stresses and the reality of nursing life, resonate with international literature. Dreams for a better programme included smaller group learning. Vocation, friendship and resilience seem instrumental in retaining students, and Higher Education Institutions should work to facilitate these. ‘Vocation’ has been overlooked in the retention discussions, and working more actively to foster vocation and belongingness could be important.
Despite studies that extol the value of multidisciplinary teamwork (Poulton and West, 1993; Pearson and Spencer, 1995), there have been few examples of in-depth research that provides evidence of ‘best practice’ in the clinical setting. This article presents evidence from two case studies that explore the realities of multidisciplinary teamwork. They were both set in neurorehabilitation units where there was an ‘integrated interdisciplinary approach’ to patient care. The authors differentiate between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary working, since the latter would seem to better describe the teamwork that was witnessed; the two case studies are summarized; the elements of effective interdisciplinary teamwork that emerged from the data are listed; evidence from the cases which exemplified best practice is examined; and finally, the ways in which these aspects of interdisciplinary teamwork appeared to benefit the patient are described.
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