Introduction
It is important to improve the nursing curriculum with regard to evidence-based practice and information literacy. The curriculum also requires the nursing educators to look for and make use of relevant nursing research while focusing on their teaching objectives, nursing practice, research interests, and the students’ practical necessities. The current ADN, BSN, and MSN curricula require improvements as far as the above is concerned.
Research has been considered to be a very important facet of nursing programs. Therefore, the ADN, BSN, and MSN curricula should incorporate evidence-based nursing and information literacy by liaising with librarians. This will ensure the production of effective nurses (Schulte and Sherwill-Navarro, 2009).
Main Body
The nursing curriculum is supposed to produce competent nurses to meet the changing demands of the healthcare environment with regard to cost, quality, and safety. The curriculum is meant to impact students with knowledge in nursing so that they are able to care for patients in different settings. The curriculum triggers the faculty members to employ current methods of technology in nursing programs. Consequently, the students are able to benefit from the up-to-date curriculum with regard to the changing healthcare environment.
The nursing faculty utilizes the nursing curricula by introducing students to the theory of acute care and the actual practice through the adoption of an integrated nursing care module. This module enables students to detect acute conditions in patients with cardiac, renal, respiratory, and neurological disorders early enough to enhance management. A competency-based framework, through the use of group seminars, is essential to ensure that theory is successfully applied in practice. This approach is very useful in that it enhances the competence and confidence of nurses in their assessment and managerial duties of deteriorating patients in the general wards during registration (McGaughey, 2009).
The role that has a direct impact on the faculty members is that of a clinical nurse. This is attributed to the fact that there are a lot of shortages of clinical nurses. This consequently leads to a shortage of faculty members as well because most of the nurses have to work in hospitals and save lives. As a result, there are few faculty members to enroll and educate students. There are different evaluation practices that are used to evaluate students. According to research carried out by Salsali (2005), performance observation, teacher tests, rating scales, self-appraisal, and student achievement are the main practices used to evaluate nursing students.
According to McGaughey (2009), the competence of nurses will be enhanced through the application of evidence-based nursing practice. The use of evidence-based nursing enables nurses to employ the most effective nursing techniques while caring for their patients.
A study by Schulte and Sherwill-Navarro (2009) reveals that the curriculum brings about the collaboration between the faculty members and librarians in relation to research. This collaboration has been seen to yield positive outcomes with regard to gaining information that is based on research hence, enhancing confidence amongst the faculty members in the nursing practice. Salsali, 2005, has stated the most obvious outcome which is the acquisition of appropriate skills, knowledge, and attitude by the students, in nursing practice.
Conclusion
My future focus is on teaching a BSN nursing program. Successful teaching will be made possible by integrating information and computer literacy, and evidence-based nursing into the BSN nursing program. This way, the program will make use of both technology and research in delivering knowledge and skills. Librarians are part and parcel of a nursing program and especially when it comes to research. Therefore, there is a need to collaborate with them. Incorporation of these facets in the BSN nursing program will guarantee the production of competent and effective nurses.
References
McGaughey, J. (2009). Acute Care Teaching in the Undergraduate Nursing Curriculum, 14, 11-16.
Salsali, M. (2005). Evaluating Teaching effectiveness in Nursing Education: An Iranian Perspective. BMC Medical Education, 5, 29-35.
Schulte, S. J. & Sherwill-Navarro, P. J. (2009). Nursing Educators’ Perceptions of Collaboration with Librarians. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 97, 57-60.