Introduction
In the nursing discipline, the students must be actively engaged by their lecturers in learning to ensure they develop much-needed concepts aligned with professional competencies and standards. The course is highly relevant to the professional nursing course as it makes the students explore more from the technical aspects and equip them with the general knowledge they need to execute their learning field effectively. The paper will discuss the main aspects of the course and its cultivation; student-centered learning; professional qualities and guidelines; nursing students’ experiences; and learning strategies, environment, and theories.
Aspects of the Course
How the Learner Would Benefit from Taking the Course
Significantly, the course takes eight weeks and offers all the learners with required knowledge regarding community health nursing. The student merits from undertaking the course concerning the responsibility of a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) in facilitating society’s overall health. In the first week, the learner will be introduced to community health nursing with detailed roles of a nurse in offering services, including an advocate, collaborator, clinician, educator, leader, and manager duties. In addition, the course will give students a chance to learn and practice concepts, including community assessment to establish the society’s health needs and design an elaborate plan to meet such demands. While culminating in the lesson, students will have developed the capability to utilize their acquired skills as the course advances BSN’s expertise and engenders multiple career opportunities.
Specific Concepts Emphasized in the Course
To a greater extent, the particular concepts stressed involves an introduction to the evolution of community health nursing that covers the context and scope of the societal well-being. Other noticeable aspects include the effect of politics on a group of people, the epidemiological concepts deployed in enhancing the community health and pinpointing healthcare obstacles facing vulnerable populace, comprehending the collective responsibilities in disaster management, the prevention of infectious illnesses, and learning the lasting impacts of substance abuse. In addition, other dimensions foregrounded in the course involve describing multiple health issues of populations across the lifespan together with observing and explaining a certain society by undertaking a community needs assessment and conducting a windshield survey. At the course’s end, the learners will be capable of using their newly-obtained skills and diagnostic expertise to examine the societal needs and pass the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX).
Relevance to Professional Nursing Practice
The course is permissible for professional nursing practice as nurses exercise their roles within the society and are mandated to have all the databases to offer good services and care to all individuals when required. As a result, the course will equip the students with crucial information to make them practice within the community effectively. Notably, nurses must comprehend the available policies while executing their responsibilities (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Therefore, they must study a BSN’s role in facilitating societal health. As professional nurses, the course prepares them to acquire knowledge to promote communal welfare and well-being. Due to such, the course is relevant as student nurses will learn essential methods to offer education in cases of disease occurrence, such as infectious illness pandemics and control.
Cultivation of Course
At first, a new module will be introduced to the learners every week. Such lessons are grounded on the course objectives and promote learning by relying on the earlier week’s module. The learners will participate in evidence-based active learning approaches to equip them with primary aspects of each week. Significantly, during the end of the eight weeks, the student nurses will adequately fathom the correlation of how the units have been constructed upon each other to facilitate an extensive comprehension of community health nursing (Billings & Halstead, 2019). In week one, the learners will be introduced to the context and the scope of community health nursing, including the nursing practice’s purpose and nurse’s duties and responsibilities while undertaking societal services. During the second week, learners will comprehend the basic epidemiological aspects deployed in enhancing communal well-being, screenings, and vaccinations by engaging in a societal service-learning task. Nevertheless, this module will cover the factors causing the occurrence and re-emerging of infectious ailments.
In week three, the students will engage in a case study that inspires them to elaborate on trends and events affecting the healthcare system’s status nationally and internationally. In addition, they will acquire an adequate understanding of the federal and third-party payer’s duties in sponsoring healthcare. During the fourth week, the undergraduate nurses will commence examining, designing, executing, and appraising a blueprint for the community served by utilizing an evidence-grounded practice method via a concept mapping task. Notably, the learners will have the capability to pinpoint obstacles and analyze much-needed requirements for evidence-based practice. There will be an extensive elaboration of multiple health issues of children, infants, women, teenagers, youths, men, and the geriatric populace focusing on victim-centered care in the fifth week. In the same module, the students will acquire knowledge that will assist them in developing family health nursing capabilities and enable them to participate in a program-led role-play simulation actively.
In the sixth week, by using a flipped classroom, the nurses will be able to pinpoint the healthcare stumbling blocks, uncertainty factors, and the standard of life for those with mental ailments, chronic health concerns, and disabilities. There will be an introduction to the personal and social elements resulting in susceptibility to the migrant workers and homeless. To a greater extent, in week seven, the student’s expertise will be supplemented with the capability to highlight groups at risk for contracting tuberculosis, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, the students will gain knowledge about the lasting impacts of violence, natural disasters, infectious diseases, and substance abuse. During a rotational question-and-answer session, they will be guest speakers in the community and the class and gain first-hand experience in public communication. Finally, during week eight, the students will have the capability to define and comprehend the collective responsibilities and the nurse’s duty in disaster management phases, including prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. The learners will have an elaborate skill to determine and appraise the impacts of disasters on individuals and their societies as they engage in a mock calamity drill.
Student-Centered Learning
Considerably, the week’s aspects anticipate facilitating student-centered learning, whereby in this course, each weekly dimension has an active learning strategy to boost the learner’s knowledge. Student-centered learning is educational initiatives, pedagogy encounters, and theoretical methods and techniques that address students’ demands, preferences, and cultural concepts (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Some strategies, including teaching discussion approaches and lesson planning, integrate learners into fully participating in the lesson by asking questions and sharing their ideologies comfortably. Significantly, the weekly aspects are developed to inspire student autonomy and create chances for self-reflection.
During the first week, collaborative learning will be encouraged via an in-class discussion, whereby learners will know the duties of a community health nurse. In week two, the undergraduate nurses will participate in a community service-learning task to advance their knowledge encounters by undertaking a social assessment and meeting the established needs. In addition, students will be engaged in a case study during the third week to enable them to observe, appraise, execute, and solve an issue facing vulnerable populations. In week four, the learners will have a dimension mapping activity to ensure they enhance their earlier knowledge and are able to evaluate, contrast, and conduct windshield surveys and community needs assessments effectively. During the fifth week, the students engage in faculty-led simulation to facilitate victim-centered care, whereby they use skills acquired to analyze preventive measures for issues. The phenomenon enables the nurses to increase their competencies and confidence while providing patient services.
Furthermore, there will be a flipped classroom model during week six, allowing ample room for better expertise enrichment via increasing student participation. In week seven, the learners will have a chance to engage in a question and answer session with people impacted by infectious ailments, violence, natural disasters, and substance abuse. The students will use their critical and analytical thinking skills to reflect on and discuss the healthcare systems, enabling them to connect with real-world issues. Finally, during week eight, the disaster day simulation will advance the undergraduate nurses learning by ensuring they work collectively with other professionals in a different field. They will execute and appraise processes to promote good nursing practices.
Professional Standards and Guidelines
Significantly, all the weekly aspects rhyme with the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) competencies. The main focus areas of the QSEN proficiencies include safety, evidence-based practice, quality enhancement, patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, and informatics (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Each of these competencies embeds attitudes, knowledge bases, and skills required for a nurse.
Table 1: Key Concept Alignment with Professional Standards and Guidelines
Alignment of Weekly Key Concepts to Overview
Considerably, this unit offers chances for undergraduate nursing learners to attain the capabilities required to design a community health assessment while utilizing the nursing system to develop and execute care for multiple populations. The first-week aspect matches with the course overview concerning the mandate of community health nursing and the responsibility of a BSN nurse. The second framework for comprehending epidemiological concepts aligns with the overview of promoting joint health. The third week that focuses on multiple factors affecting community health aligns with the overview of care to the susceptible populace. The fourth concept aligns with the course overview of facilitating population health. In addition, the fifth dimension of exploring different health issues affecting different age groups aligns with the overview of promoting health by ensuring patient-centered care. On the other hand, the sixth concept aligns with facilitating general health for populations through quality enhancement. The seventh framework matches the safety course overview by exploring the lasting effects of natural disasters, infectious ailments, and substance abuse. The last concept of week eight rhymes with a BSN’s responsibility to facilitate societal health in the overview and practicing community health nursing.
Course Outline Relevance
The course outline is permissible for the nurse tutor duty since it is a crucial portion of designing the unit plan. Even though the activity may be challenging, designing a module outline and the teaching plan is expertise required by nurse educators. The outline acts as a contract with learners regarding the course description (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Significantly, having a feasible course outline warrants the stability and cohesiveness of the developed education blueprint.
Learning Strategies
In this community health course, the three evidence-grounded active learning techniques deployed to handle the diverse demands of the students include role-play, simulation, and collaborative learning. The approaches pinpointed address the diverse wants of nurses since a single class embeds a mixture of life encounters, backgrounds, ages, personalities, and cultures. The evidence-based methods are attainable as they have the potential to promote learning via inspiring engagement by the students (Billings & Halstead, 2019). A fresh graduate with minimal experience can benefit from collaborative learning homework. The simulation participation merits a middle-aged learner seeking a career change, while role-play is vital for students with various life encounters. Collaborative learning is advantageous as it motivates reflective and active training and engenders teamwork.
Implementation of Learning Strategies
Simulation serves as the highest deployed evidence-based studying technique, and it will be applied in weeks eight and five to handle the diverse learning demands of nurses. During the fifth week, learners will engage in a faculty-led role-play simulation to offer effective victim-centered safety in their entire life (Hayes et al., 2018). Through using simulation, the students will participate in a mock disaster drill in week eight (Billings & Halstead, 2019). The strategy is beneficial as it enables the community health nurses to practice high-stress catastrophes with hurting people and embeds auditory, styles-visual, and kinesthetic learning.
Assessment of Learning Needs and Styles
Kinesthetic is the most learning style spearheaded by simulation strategy. However, both auditory and visual learning methods must be involved in the evidence-grounded active technique. Notably, the kinesthetic students quickly retain massive databases via tactile stimulation, which is ideal for ‘hands-on’ nurses (Hayes et al., 2018). The auditory learners study better via the faculty-led role-play simulations, whereby they practice conversations and be able to acquire much-needed information (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Lastly, the visual students retain the absorbed database through writing, visual aids, and reading which can be attained by staging a disaster scene.
Clinical Reasoning and Self-Reflection Skills
Developing learning chances via simulation enables learners to practice skills and acquire confidence without hurting victims. The simulation learning technique inspires self-reflection and clinical reasoning (Cho & Kweon, 2017). Before accomplishing the simulation task, the learners will debrief for meaningful learning (DML), promoting reflective thinking, clinical rationality, and studying (Billings & Halstead, 2019). DML enables in, on, and beyond-actions reflections, making the students share information and escalate their cognition and learning of the course.
Learning Environments
The collaboration and teamwork in online engagement engender advanced victim-centered care results and client safety, which can be facilitated by creating opportunities throughout the course. Providing a face-to-face interprofessional learning environment by inviting guest speakers from other healthcare disciplines, such as social workers, encourages active learning and cultivates teamwork and collaboration (Billings & Halstead, 2019). In clinical, the course tutor may decide to integrate with other healthcare team members to support unit goals and facilitate learning opportunities.
Nursing Students’ Experiences
Regarding the cultural backgrounds, the English secondary learners may encounter anxiety while speaking with group members, hindering them from actively participating in classroom discussions. Concerning the societal aspect, socioeconomic status is vital in an individual’s ability to learn (Billings & Halstead, 2019). A student from a financially poor household society may not acquire technological devices much-needed to facilitate learning (Settlage, 2020). Lastly, life experiences, such as engagements before medical knowledge as they undertake the course, may deter or promote further learning. It is recommended for education to deploy multiple active learning, as students have varying study phases.
Learning Theories
A constructivist theory can be used to develop the nurse education course. The models indicate that skills are constructed from earlier experiences and knowledge. Due to such, the student utilizes a modern database to build what they had already studied. The previous modules learned by the students can be used to design the community health course per the constructivist theory (Billings & Halstead, 2019). The theory will be applied by using the learner’s current knowledge and building upon each week’s lessons to grasp concepts by making connections spearheaded through active learning activities.
References
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