Description

Currently, 60 % of the United States population is white, while the remaining belongs to ethnic or racial minorities. By 2045, the census bureau predicts that there will no longer be any single racial or ethnic majority group in the United States. Yet, people across all healthcare professions are overwhelmingly non-hispanic and white, leaving people from underrepresented groups severely underrepresented.

Healthcare Professions

The lack of diversity in healthcare professions is an issue because there is overwhelming evidence that patients from underrepresented groups experience disparities in healthcare at alarmingly high rates when compared to their White counterparts. Diversity is especially important in the nursing workforce since nurses are often the healthcare providers that engage with patients the most frequently and intimately. Additionally, patients demand a diverse nursing workforce that can provide culturally competent care. The purpose of this article is to summarize nationwide undergraduate nursing enrolment trends and discuss strategies to improve recruitment, admissions, enrolment, and retention of nursing students who belong to underrepresented groups.

Core competence is viewed as a combination of attributes, such as applied knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable nurses to carry out care duties efficiently and effectively. Achieving competency-based nursing education requires recognising core competencies, developing plans for curricula and instructional programs that clearly express the attributes of each core competency and developing instructional tools and strategies that provide effective ways to enhance these core competencie. Generic and specific tools have been developed to measure nursing competencies during education. Some nursing education scholars have developed specific teaching methods to improve core competencies, such as critical thinking skills through Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and psychomotor skills through simulation. Empathy is described as one of the core competencies in nursing. Previous empathy related literatures described the how the nurses could consciously develop a therapeutic relationship with patients.

A good therapeutic relationship not only allows nurses to provide more individualized care, but also enhances both of caring and nursing profession. Empathy and caring are potential lessons in nursing education curricula that often go unnoticed and undocumented, but are usually the traits most mentioned by caregivers from other healthcare teams and patients. If nurses lack empathy and caring skills, they may not be able to meet the patients’ care needs in the first place, which at worst may lead to clinical negligence and disputes. A cross-sectional study showed nursing students had a low level of empathy. Everson indicated that providing empathy content at each stage of a degree, programs with specific films and Balint groups, may promote empathic concern. Despite the importance of empathy and caring behaviors, teaching first-year undergraduate nursing students to understand clinical situations before entering clinical practice is challenging and there are few evidence-based interventions. To the best of our knowledge, there is no research on whether increasing empathy and caring behavior education improves core competencies in first-year undergraduate nursing students.

To determine the effects of using case scenarios and skill videos in distance education as a practical teaching learning strategy on student satisfaction, professional perception, and professional values among nursing students during the covid-19 pandemic. This is a quasi-experimental study with a one-group, pre-test, post-test design. The study was conducted with 166 baccalaureate nursing students who attended online classes for 13 weeks, which included 80-minute theoretical and 120-minute practical training each week. A student information form, the student satisfaction scale-short form, the Nursing Profession Perception of Scale (NPPS), and the nurses’ professional values scale-revised. We found significant differences between the students’ pre- and post-test scores for the scales NPPS and the NPVS-R, who attended online classes during the pandemic. However, our findings demonstrated that distance education had no effect on the level of student satisfaction. The using case scenarios and skill videos in distance education as a strategy to deliver nursing course during the pandemic showed positive effects on the adoption of professional values and the perception about nursing profession among nursing students.

Nursing Education Methods

Distance education method was used to deliver the obstetrics and gynecology nursing course. It was aimed to improve theoretical knowledge and practical skills of the nursing students. The students participated in online classes for 13 weeks, which included 80-minute theoretical and 120-minute practical training each week. The course was carried out online through virtual classrooms a distance education platform supported by the university.

The theoretical course was conducted in synchronous virtual classrooms. The students could make verbal contributions by opening their camera and microphones or written by texting. The duration of each classroom was 40 minutes and there was a 10 minute break between classes. The video recordings of the course were uploaded to the platform and students could watch the videos repeatedly at any time. Attendance status of the students was tracked on the system by checking their live virtual attendance. In case of illness, the students watching course video recordings after the class was marked as present on the attendance report.

The practical course included 60 minutes of clinical skills course and 60 minutes of case scenario discussion each week. We developed 24 videos for clinical skills. In the videos, the instructor performed each clinical skill according to the instructions. In this study, 12 case scenarios were used which developed by the study group for another evidence-based study. The case scenarios consisted of five parts: Purpose, objectives, clinical case, evaluation questions, and evaluation form. Evaluative questions and forms were created for each video and scenario to evaluate students on a standard-based assessment. Each clinical case was developed to provide the basic information and skills typically targeted in obstetrics and gynecology nursing courses.