New opportunities for nurses in medical education: facilitating valuable community learning experiences

Analysis of User Satisfaction with Online Education Platforms in China during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The outbreak of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in various countries at the end of last year has transferred traditional face-to-face teaching to online education platforms, which directly affects the quality of education. Taking user satisfaction on online education platforms in China as the research object, this paper uses a questionnaire survey and web crawler to collect experience data of online and offline users, constructs a customer satisfaction index system by analyzing emotion and the existing literature for quantitative analysis, and builds aback propagation (BP) neural network model to forecast user satisfaction. The conclusion shows that users' personal factors have no direct influence on user satisfaction, while platform availability has the greatest influence on user satisfaction. Finally, suggestions on improving the online education platform are given to escalate the level of online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, so as to promote the reform of information-based education.

Crossing professional cultures: A qualitative study of nurses working in a medical school

BACKGROUND

Leaving the nursing workforce is often seen as a loss. Some nurses maintain a current nursing registration and work within university schools of medicine. Little is known about their work.

AIM

To explore and describe the experiences of nurses who work in a New Zealand medical school.

DESIGN

Qualitative descriptive informed by autoethnography.

METHODS

Interviews with 14 nurses over a 12-month period in 2015. Data were inductively analysed.

RESULTS

The nurses were mid-to-late career with prior clinical experience and all held postgraduate qualifications. Five themes emerged.

CONCLUSIONS

Nurses chose to work in a medical school for a variety of reasons. They sought to maintain their nursing identity but the nursing profession often did not recognise them as nurses. Although individual colleagues recognised their value, organisationally, limited attention was afforded to the specific orientation, mentorship and development of nurses' careers within this setting.

Learning from lives together: medical and social work students' experiences of learning from people with disabilities in the community

The study aims to evaluate an interprofessional community-based learning event, focussing on disability. The learning opportunity was based on the Leicester Model of Interprofessional Education, organised around the experiences and perceptions of service users and their carers. Programme participants were drawn from medicine and social work education in Leicester, UK, bringing together diverse traditions in the care of people with disabilities. Small student groups (3-4 students) worked from one of the eight community rehabilitation hospitals through a programme of contact with people with disabilities in hospital, at home or in other community settings. The evaluation, in March 2005, used a mixed methods approach, incorporating questionnaire surveys, focus group interviews with students and feedback from service users. Responses were collated and analysed using quantitative and qualitative measures. Fifty social work and 100 medical students completed the first combined delivery of the module. The findings indicated that the merging of social work and medical perspectives appear to create some tensions, although overall the student experience was found to be beneficial. Service users (16 responses) valued the process. They were not concerned at the prospect of meeting a number of students at home or elsewhere and were pleased to think of themselves as educators. Problems and obstacles still anticipated include changing the mindset of clinicians and practising social workers to enable them to support students from each other's disciplines in practice learning. The generally positive outcomes highlight that disability focussed joint learning offers a meaningful platform for interprofessional education in a practice environment.

'Can you take a student this morning?' Maximising effective teaching by practice nurses

OBJECTIVES

Little is known about the contribution nurses make to medical student learning. This study set out to explore the nature of practice nurse teaching during the general practice clerkship and to investigate ways in which the teacher and learner (the practice nurse and the medical student) can be best supported to maximise learning.

METHODS

Mixed focus groups were conducted with general practitioner educational supervisors and practice nurses. Further focus groups were conducted with students on completion of clerkships.

RESULTS

There is wide variation in the delivery, organisation and expectations of practice nurse teaching. Although there is some evidence of a passive learning experience, the learning dynamic and the student-nurse relationship are regarded highly.

CONCLUSIONS

Time spent with practice nurses is an important part of the clerkship in general practice. The nature of the practice nurse-medical student relationship differs from that of the educational supervisor-medical student relationship and can be built upon to maximise learning during the clerkship. The experience for the practice nurse, medical student and supervisor can be enhanced through formal preparation for delivering teaching.