The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is conducting a survey of nursing school's disaster preparedness. The survey only takes a few minutes to complete. Access the survey at Disaster Preparedness Survey . Survey closes April 28.
The NLN Task Group on Funding for Nursing Education Research is asking for nursing faculty assistance. They have posted a survey on traditional and non-traditional sources of public and private funding.
The Task Group statement: "The NLN’s position statement, Funding for Nursing Education Research, identifies an urgent need to provide significant funds to support research that will build the science of nursing education. In order to achieve this goal, scholars must have substantial funding from federal, state, regional, local, institutional, and organizational programs to support their lines of investigation. Your feedback on this survey will assist our task group to create an online repository that will help novice through advanced researchers locate funding sources."
The survey is posted until May 15 at Survey on Funding for Nursing Education Research
The Task Force on Informatics Competencies of the NLN’s Educational Technology and Information Management Advisory Council (ETIMAC) has posted a survey to see how nurses are being prepared for practice that requires the use of informatics. If you are a nursing faculty member please spend 15 minutes to take the Faculty Survey, while deans, directors, or chairs can take the Administrators Survey. [Survey closes on April 12, 2006]
It has been traditional in nursing education to emphasize memorization. Students must memorize anatomical parts, drugs and their uses and effects, pathophysiologic changes with disease, lab values, diagnostic testing procedures, et cetera, et cetera. Often what is required to be committed to memory will change over time as research reveals new information. So why do we continue to require so much memorization? The standard answer is that nurses must have that information to make decisions quickly. But what happens when memory fades, or only parts of what was memorized is recalled? I believe it is better for nurses to learn how to find information as they need it. Information that is frequently needed will soon be committed to memory, but they would also realize the limits of memory.
In the past we looked up information in texts. Texts are efficient for storage but not so fast for retrieval (or easy to carry). Electronic texts such as a drug guide for a handheld computer are easy to carry and very easy to access. Nursing educators must teach students to use such resources, then evaluate students on the quality of their application (rather than recall) of knowledge.
It is popular in nursing education to refer to Knowles' Adult Learner principles in teaching. But are any of these principles unique to adults? Couldn't you just as easily replace "adult" with "child" in teaching? Sometimes these principles are used by nurse educators to differentiate their teaching methods for returning adult students or BSN for RN students from the young adult students out of high school. However, aren't encouraging "self-direction", "seeing relevancy", "using past learning", and "showing respect" teaching methods to be used any student? "Adult" learning principles seem to make the assumption that non-adult students should learn by rote and that grades are their only motivation to learn. Teachers from K through College should be using these supposedly adult principles.
Is nursing education a unique form of education? I think it is. Professional education of any kind requires both cognitive and affective learning. You need to learn not only ABOUT nursing, but also how to BE a nurse. Nursing is also unique among the allied health professions in that it covers a very broad area of knowledge. Almost anything dealing with health and illness, both physical and mental is subject to nursing care. And there's that word care. Many professions care, but caring has a special meaning in nursing. Nurses see caring almost as an intervention, not just having concern for the well-being of others.
I have been teaching nursing for over 20 years. I teach pediatric nursing, nursing informatics, and community nursing. My main interest is in bringing technology to nursing practice and nursing education. Technology has always been part of nursing assessment but only recently have nurses begun to use it to augment practice. Medicine and nursing education have traditionally emphasized memorization in learning. I believe that there is too much for anyone to memorize. Students need to learn how to find information as they need it. Technology offers a way for this access through handheld computers, formally called PalmPilots or Personal Digital Assistants. This blog will be a place to explore these ideas of how technology can complement nursing practice.
