Technical Standards for Nursing Education Programs in the 21st Century

Abstract

Rehabilitation nurse leaders can lead in eliminating barriers to persons with disabilities entering nursing.

Nursing Faculty Perceptions Regarding Students With Physical Disabilities

“…While these might be considered positive indicators, in practice, many obstacles that are based in faculty perceptions are well documented. 2,[6][7][8]10,[16][17][18][19][20] Almost all faculty (97.6%) perceived students who use a wheelchair for mobility would be able to meet outcomes that aligned more with the cognitive and affective domains. Although there were some outcomes that did not fit fully into one domain, this result helps demonstrate that participants were considering each outcome independently.…”

“…15 Inpatient and long-term care units often accept an instructor and cohort of 6 or more students and expect students to be able to perform the psychomotor functions needed for the setting. 16,17 Community sites may not be able to accommodate larger cohorts, and smaller instructor-student ratios can be prohibitively expensive for nursing programs. Additionally, outpatient settings may already be in use for community or mental health clinical educational experiences.…”

“…The predominance of inpatient placement of students can also be attributed to views held by nurse educators and decision-makers whose own experiences may be heavily based on acute care as the foundation of nursing practice. [5][6][7][8]10,[16][17][18][19] Unconscious bias or direct discrimination against nursing students with PDs by faculty and administrators in nursing programs and nurses and administrators at clinical sites has also been documented. 19,20 Separate from cognitive or affective abilities, direct bedside nursing in the acute and long-term care settings requires certain psychomotor abilities.…”

“…Once written, nursing programs were more able to use these requirements to exclude students with PDs. 2,16 Ample literature exists investigating the desires and needs of students with PDs, as well as exploring faculty beliefs about admitting PDs students into nursing programs. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][16][17][18][19][20] However, few data are available that quantify faculty concerns about students with PDs meeting the required cognitive, affective, and psychomotor outcomes at graduation.…”

Admission of persons with disabilities into nursing and midwifery courses: Progress made by the Indian Nursing Council

“…• An examination of practices related to inclusion of nurses with disabilities during the training period and at the workplace in a few developed countries like the USA, the UK and Australia, could be helpful in this regard (56). For instance, training resources for nursing students with disabilities, and resources for faculty to train nursing students with disabilities, like those developed by the York College of Pennsylvania could be prepared by INC to aid such inclusion (57).…”