Day 3 of the Faculty of Health‘s writing week at the University of Canberra started with some great news on Yammer.
Elsewhere colleagues were writing too. One Faculty member is co-authoring a book as part of the week’s activities. The title of the book is Happy ever after? The challenge of EBT in relationship counselling for clinical psychologists. The good news is that “it is 98% complete”.
Another colleague has been off-campus for two days – one day working on an NHMRC grant with colleagues at University of Melbourne looking at the impact of a Cretan Mediterranean diet on Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Metabolic Syndrome and the other day working on paper revisions from my recent submission to the Nutrition Metabolism Cardiovascular Diseases journal paper on Med diet in Type 2 Diabetes.
A third colleague is working on two papers:
MAKING ABSTRACT CONTENT CONCRETE: STUDENTS APPLYING THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES OF CARE IN THE CLINICAL SETTING TO UNCOVER THE WHOLE OF NURSING PRACTICE
Nursing theories, abstractions and principles are important underpinnings to the way nursing practice is conducted in the clinical setting. It is important for students to grasp these ideas in order to be able to most fully participate in and learn about clinical practice. Amongst the challenges to teaching abstract content in the clinical environment are the range and diversity of clinical areas that students are placed within, the degree to which the clinical context is convergent with the theoretical ideas studied in the classroom setting and student perceptions and expectations of their placement. These challenges can be overcome through an innovative teaching strategy where students conduct a clinical project, centred on theoretical principles of care, that relates to the particular clinical specialty of their placement. The project itself, the ensuing conversations and the pedagogical structures that support learning, lead to strong learning outcomes and benefits for students, clinicians and nursing teams. Amongst the outcomes for students are deeper recognition of nursing practice and increased socialisation into nursing teams; for clinicians, opportunities to articulate practice and to reconceptualise their role; and for teams, the student projects themselves provided tools and resources that were useful and could be adopted into practice.
WHAT DO STUDENTS LEARN IN A COMMUNITY NURSING CLINICAL PLACEMENT AND HOW DO THEY APPLY IT IN THEIR WORK?
Premise:
A clinical placement in a community nursing setting gives students unique and important insights into nursing care that is transferrable to other settings. An understanding of primary health care and the community context of care enhances practice in all settings.
Research Question:
Do the learning experiences that students encounter within the Community Health DEU influence their learning or practice in subsequent clinical placements?
Process and Method
Using the DEU Reference Group as a focus group, explore what it is that clinicians and managers believe that students gain within a placement in the community setting. What is unique to this setting?
Survey students at the end of the placements to elicit what they believe were the important things that they gained within a community nursing placement. Survey students and graduate nurses six months following their community placement to find how much of this they felt they were able to transfer to a new clinical setting.
This afternoon there is an opportunity to meet to discuss writing projects.
Photo Credits
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo 3
