In our reforming health care system, there is an increasing need for nurses to move into the community and to respond to health issues at an aggregate level. The challenge for nursing education is to prepare nursing students for an expanded role that focuses on community-based health promotion created in partnership with client, agency, and education stakeholders.
This presentation focuses on an analysis of the past five years of community-centered education with undergraduate nursing students in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary. As part of their public health nursing education, students have had the opportunity to work closely with communities, aggregates, and populations through the establishment of collaborative partnerships at multiple system levels. Using a community-as-partner framework and working in groups, students complete a basic community assessment using a variety of assessment techniques, select a target population, develop a plan of action, carry out an intervention, and evaluate its processes and outcomes.
A compendium of projects will be presented; findings indicate that students have distinct preferences that are stable over time. This evidence provides a foundation for the selection of community placements and the development of clinical expectations that are tailored to the competencies of undergraduate nursing students and congruent with the realities of community practice. Benefits of persisting with partnerships will be discussed in light of student learning and stakeholder outcomes. Finally, participants will share implications for future initiatives in their own community and agency settings.
Learning Objectives: During this session, the participants and presenters will: 1. Link a community-as-partner framework with the nursing process and the foundations of public health practice. 2. Describe the essential elements of community-campus partnerships for professional education. 3. Develop insights about student preferences for assessment techniques, population targets, intervention types, system levels of interest, and outcomes achieved. 4. Appreciate/consider the implications of practice partnerships in their own community/agency settings
Keywords: Nursing Education, Community-Based Partnership
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: University of Calgary, Faculty of Nursing and its partners in community education and practice
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.