Teaching undergraduate students community nursing: using action research to increase engagement and learning

Using Action Research to Mentor Nursing Students in Global Health Advocacy

BACKGROUND

The current diverse health care environment makes it vital for nursing students to have multicultural respect and understanding. Collaborative action research can be used to engage students in the learning process.

METHOD

Action research addressing adolescent pregnancy in rural Paraguay involved nursing students in the research process and care delivery.

RESULTS

Two groups of nursing students participated in two or more cycles of action research. The first cycle included identifying the problem, research development, data gathering, and interpreting results. Contributing factors to adolescent pregnancy and potential solutions were discovered. Teaching reproductive education informed the second cycle of the action research. Students created reproductive education modules and taught them to more than 700 adolescents in Paraguay.

CONCLUSION

Action research provided a collaborative and engaging method to teach undergraduate nursing students about both global health advocacy and the research process. The cyclic nature of action research provides an excellent way to involve subsequent student groups. [J Nurs Educ. 2022;61(4):193-196.].

"Growing through relationship" - the Engagement of the Health Professional Students in the Internship Experience: a Grounded Theory Research

BACKGROUND AND AIM

Little is known about the students' engagement in the training experience and how it is lived by the health professional students. We aim at building a theoretical model of the engagement process starting from their lived experiences with Grounded Theory approach.

METHODS

In-depth qualitative interviews are conducted with 12 students from the Master Degree Courses in Nursing, Physiotherapy and Prevention Techniques in the environment and in the workplace, who had carried out and/or were doing internships in the same territory (2nd and 3rd year). Results The health professions' student engagement in the training program is developed in three main phases: initial phase, central phase and final phase, where emotions, behaviours, awareness contribute to the development of the entire engagement process with different relevance. The intertwining of these different components that develop along the stages of the experience gives life to the core category: growing through relationship, which expressed the crucial role of the relational network built during the internship experience in shaping students' engagement.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study underline the crucial role of students' engagement in the internship experience in favouring both better learning outcomes and perspective professional success and wellbeing. (www.actabiomedica.it).

Association of Community Health Nursing Educators 2020 Research Priorities and Research in Action Model

OBJECTIVE

The Association of Community/Public Health Nurse Educators (ACHNE) Research Priorities Subcommittee presents a report on the state of the science of public health nursing education.

DESIGN

Whittemore and Knafl's (Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2005, 52, 546) five-step integrative review was used.

SAMPLE

Fifty-two articles were reviewed.

MEASUREMENTS

Braun et al's. (Handbook of research methods in health social sciences, 2019, 843) thematic analysis methods were used.

RESULTS

Four themes emerged: (a) Community/Public Health Nursing Education and teaching strategies/modalities; (b) Clinical teaching and learning partnerships; (c) Environmental health and emergency response; and, (d) Cultural competence and awareness.

CONCLUSIONS

Themes informed the following research priorities: (a) a need for rigorous scientific studies highlighting the impact and effectiveness of Community/Public Health Nursing Education; (b) a need for evidence on faculty development, support and training related to community/public health activities; (c) a need for evidence on impact of Community/Public Health Nursing teaching on communities and students, and (d) a need for evidence on impact of C/PHNE strategies on long-term student knowledge, attitudes or behavior (competencies). Finally, a Research in Action Model is proposed as a means for continued forward movement of the discipline, connecting the three fundamental driving mechanisms.

Challenges and opportunities: the role of the district nurse in influencing practice education

The responsibility of the district nurse (DN), alongside complex case management and leadership, is to ensure Specialist Practitioner Qualification District Nurse (SPQDN) education continues to create practitioners delivering quality evidence-based care. DN leadership and its importance have come to the fore during the COVID-19 crisis, where hospital discharges have increased rapidly to make way for highly complex admissions (HM Government, 2020). This paper examines the importance of the SPQDN qualification, exploring the role of the DN within practice education. Continuation of the vital DN qualification will ensure that the numbers of qualified DNs increase, ultimately protecting community capacity. With a move towards an apprenticeship model to achieve the SPQDN, DNs must engage with and influence curriculum development to confirm courses deliver requirements of the workplace, commissioners and the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan. Expectations of the DN role within practice education have changed, moving away from the practice teacher standards to the new Nursing and Midwifery Council Standards for Student Support and Assessment. This poses new challenges in DN education in practice. The implications of this transition threaten to de-value the quality of the assessment process by removing the high standards of preparation previously demanded; ultimately, this is a risk to the provision of the quality practice education that previously existed.

Use of Action Research in Nursing Education

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to describe action research in nursing education and to propose a definition of action research for providing guidelines for research proposals and criteria for assessing potential publications for nursing higher education. Methods. The first part of this project involved a search of the literature on action research in nursing higher education from 1994 to 2013. Searches were conducted in the CINAHL and MEDLINE databases. Applying the criteria identified, 80 publications were reviewed. The second part of the project involved a literature review of action research methodology from several disciplines to assist in assessing articles in this review. Results. This article summarizes the nursing higher education literature reviewed and provides processes and content related to four topic areas in nursing higher education. The descriptions assist researchers in learning more about the complexity of both the action research process and the varied outcomes. The literature review of action research in many disciplines along with the review of action research in higher education provided a framework for developing a nursing-education-centric definition of action research. Conclusions. Although guidelines for developing action research and criteria for publication are suggested, continued development of methods for synthesizing action research is recommended.

Shaping the research experiences of graduate students using action research

BACKGROUND

Nursing research capacity is often not optimal in developing countries. Capacity building at the graduate nurse level presents an opportunity for improved research output. Students pursuing a research methods course at a nursing school in Jamaica expressed fear and anxiety towards the course. Action research was used to address this fear and improve learning outcomes.

OBJECTIVE

To determine attitudes towards research and to improve the experience of graduate students pursuing a research methods course at a nursing school in Jamaica.

METHODS

Students (n=44) registered in the Research Methods course of the MScN at a nursing school in Kingston, Jamaica for the academic year 2010/2011, were invited to participate. Each student was assigned a main supervisor and an alternate supervisor and all had equal access to the course leader and content. On completion of the course three focus group discussions of 10-14 students per group were conducted to determine how students felt about the course experience and their attitude towards the course.

RESULTS

Thirty-seven students (mean age of 41.4 ± 1.5 years; 94% female) participated in the exploratory course evaluation exercise. The participants reported that they entered research methods with feelings of apprehension and anxiety. However, these fears were allayed by a combination of factors including interest in students' welfare, affirmation of students, respect for and understanding of students' needs and resourcefulness, and the use of a panel of experts. Barriers included faculty's unrealistic expectations of students' research competencies and the limited time in which to learn and apply concepts. While students thought the course as challenging they felt more confident that they could be successful on completion of the course.

CONCLUSION

Significant improvement in attitudes to research was realized among graduate nursing students using action research at an urban school of nursing in Jamaica.

The association between academic engagement and achievement in health sciences students

BACKGROUND

Educational institutions play an important role in encouraging student engagement, being necessary to know how engaged are students at university and if this factor is involved in student success point and followed.To explore the association between academic engagement and achievement.

METHODS

Cross-sectional study. The sample consisted of 304 students of Health Sciences. They were asked to fill out an on-line questionnaire. Academic achievements were calculated using three types of measurement.

RESULTS

Positive correlations were found in all cases. Grade point average was the academic rate most strongly associated with engagement dimensions and this association is different for male and female students. The independent variables could explain between 18.9 and 23.9% of the variance (p < 0.05) in the population of university students being analyzed.

CONCLUSIONS

Engagement has been shown to be one of the many factors, which are positively involved, in the academic achievements of college students.