Summary
To a great extent, contemporary curriculum developments engender content-relevant, evidence-grounded, and enhanced learning into nursing education. The responsibility of the Academic Nurse Educator (ANE) is to offer and cultivate a conducive surrounding for learning. They provide a challenging and stimulating structured environment to help baccalaureate nursing students (BSNs) during the training process. Due to such, BSN learners has an intense opportunity to develop their competencies, knowledge, skills, and attitudes. In nursing, the facilitation of nursing relies on a curriculum that integrates sufficient studying activities, adequate examination of learning results, and rhymes with the quality and safety education for nurses (QSEN) competencies (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Utilizing supplemental resources, learning theory, and scenario-grounded tasks develop the BSN student’s learning in both online and classroom environments and familiarize them with community health nursing concepts.
Learning Environment
Module 1: Introduction to Community Health Nursing (CHN)
In this module, all the integrated course elements generate a challenging and intellectually stimulating environment and mandate the student to examine the changing duties and roles of a community health nurse (CHN). In addition, they will familiarize themselves with the responsibilities of a BSN and comprehend the similarities and differences between community health nursing care and hospital-based nursing. As a result, the learner acquires an extensive working knowledge of a CHN and how societal health regulations and systems impact the scope of practice.
To a great extent, the scenario-based task will be developing a business letter construction, whereby the students independently accomplish a random survey about a community issue, such as child obesity. Afterward, the learners divide into groups with other students engaged in similar activities for discussion. Upon integrating learners, they can commence to intellectually stimulate one another via reciprocal learning and peer-reviewed teaching, which is team-based. Every student can sprout a diversified idea for the letter, learn a new concept, or acquire a deeper comprehension of the assignment (James et al., 2018). In this module, the assigned business letters offer BSN students an interactive approach to patient circumstances in a secure and controlled environment. It enhances nursing skills, knowledge, and competencies via clinical reasoning and critical thinking.
As the health issue study unfolds, the students will learn how to respond to different situations and have opportunities to review their previous decisions and identify crucial databases for promoting pragmatic patient outcomes. The letter development can help students have clinical forethought and predict future complications (Muir, 2019). Significantly, the learning activity rhymes with the QSEN’s primary proficiencies, mainly concerning patient-centered care, collaboration, teamwork, and safety (Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, n.d). Therefore, the learners will be motivated to comprehend enhancing patient-centered care by working together to engender pragmatic outcomes.
Module 2: Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)
The module creates a surrounding that intellectually stimulates and challenges learners by promoting healthy choices by undertaking activities to enhance the condition’s in the human environment. Therefore, the students gain extensive knowledge regarding the social determinants of health. Utilizing the federal government microsite from this module, the learners will acquire more skills and knowledge concerning how to generate behavioral, psychological, structural, and economic surroundings that facilitate the general health of community members (Savage et al., 2016). To a great extent, students will progress in developing collaboration skills by working in groups of five to work through a scenario-based health disparity case study. The presentation and discussion questions motivate the learners to reflect and make worthwhile suggestions regarding the future and existing health and quality of life issues peoples face in their environment (racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic group). The module challenges and intellectually stimulates the students by engaging them deeply in research, whereby they create an evidence-based project through presentations to ease the need or gap in the community.
The grouping of the students results in intellectual stimulation of students via reciprocal learning and peer teaching, making them gain an understanding of modifiable and non-modifiable health disparity factors affecting the United State’s community members. In this module, the assigned societal education project enables the students to assume diversified roles than that of BSN, thus promoting nursing skills, knowledge, and competencies development via clinical reasoning. The module creates an environment of considering various social health determinants that cause health disparities, thus challenging and intellectually stimulating the students to develop key proficiencies, including teamwork, patient-centered care, evidence-based practice, and quality improvement (Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, n.d). The BSN learners’ competencies depend on the acquired skills, knowledge bases, and attitudes developed during the health disparity group discussion and presentation, which make them produce positive outcomes in community healthcare.
Module 3: Mental Illness in a Community Setting
The course components in the entire module establish a challenging and intellectually stimulating environment that mandates the BSN student to examine the differential impacts of mental disorders. In addition, the learners will analyze the community setting’s mental conditions and demographic variables and understand the role of the professional nurse in improving mental health. The scenario-based activity will be through mental health disorder outline and presentation, incorporating engaging in a game-based learning strategy activity. The games will enable the learners to learn various symptoms and indicators resulting in various mental disorders of multiple community members (Gorman & Anwar, 2019). The tests and games assigned in this module offer the students an interactive approach to identifying a patient circumstance in a safe and controlled environment.
Therefore, the BSN students become facilitated with the development of nursing knowledge base, attitude, capabilities, and proficiencies via clinical reasoning and critical thinking. Through gaming and tests, the learners will gain more databases, review their previous choices, and identify crucial information to improve patients’ mental healthcare (Leet et al., 2021). The skills, attitudes, and knowledge acquired regarding treating, intervening, and socializing with the patient result in developing key competencies, including informatics, safety, quality improvement, victim-centered care, collaboration, and teamwork among BSN students.
Learning Theory
In module two, one of the student’s learning outcomes is to identify two methods of understanding the unique health needs of the community and three ways to engage community members in improving their overall health. To a great extent, the outcome significantly reflects the constructivist learning theory. The approach indicates that knowledge is built before learned encounters (Gold, 2019). Therefore, the students have a chance to utilize their past knowledge of earlier nursing curricula to navigate the manifested learning task effectively. The highlighted learning outcome matches the theory as it enables the learners to present their knowledge in various ways while encouraging group projects and collaborative learning with colleagues.
To a great extent, the constructivist model applies to online learning since it motivates the students to think critically, digest, and deploy their acquired nursing knowledge. Nurse educators can utilize the constructivist learning approach to the class curriculum by using online discussion boards. The learners can make culminations regarding the material grounded on their previously learned concepts and experiences and enable them to communicate with one another and share their viewpoints in class. However, the less technical savvy learners face the challenge of not attaining their student learning outcomes due to possible learning curves (Gold, 2019). Significantly, various materials, including posters, videos, and PowerPoint, must be integrated to help the less technical savvy learners to navigate the online course content successfully.
Learning Resource Justification
Module 1 Learning Resources
The first resource is a textbook by James et al. (2018), and it better suits the course as it provides the students with the required knowledge to effectively navigate the roles and duties of the community and public health nurse. In addition, it offers extensive statistics regarding community health nursing. At the same time, the video by The Incredible Journey (2019) is effective for the curriculum as it can merit students with diversified learning styles and actively engage them in the course material. For instance, the video is an essential resource for visual and auditory learners. Lastly, the journal by Muir (2019) is beneficial for kinesthetic and visual students. It rhymes with the student learning objectives and course objectives by preparing them to be innovative while engaging in scenario-based activities to present the competency of the weekly topic.
Module 2 Learning Resources
The second module, regarding the social determinants of health, utilizes a website and textbook. The Healthy People 2030 website matches the course’s outcomes as it gives a supplementary database regarding the health disparity and social factors in the United States (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, n.d). The federal government owns the microsite and serves as a credible source of information, mainly concerning the behavioral, environmental, economic, personal, and social components that affect community health. In addition, the textbook by Savage et al. (2016) is a scholarly article and acts as the most credible source of information regarding nursing health science, mainly for caring populace with different health disparities in the United States. The book aligns with the course by familiarizing the students with nursing research and impacting their existing and future nursing practice to facilitate optimal nursing care per the QSEN proficiencies. At the same time, the textbook provides visual and kinesthetic assistance to learners. The learners can utilize the book to study different learning styles required while making class presentations concerning health disparities among American community populations.
Module 3 Learning Resources
The third module addresses mental illness in a community setting and utilizes a textbook and a journal that better matches the course outcomes. At first, the textbook by Gorman and Anwar (2019) provides a credible database that aligns with the course. The learners develop a vital comprehension of contemporary and historical views on mental illness. The scholarly article benefits visual and kinesthetic students by making them learn about the differential impacts of mental disorders concerning age, race, socioeconomic, and sex, which is one of the course outcomes. On the other hand, Leet et al. (2021) journal offers a credible database for BSN students regarding how they should care for patients with mental health disorders. The learners are familiar with different conversational writing styles that can aid them in recognizing and responding to essential mental health issues. The course advocates how community educators must be conversant with multiple learning styles to stimulate their skills, knowledge, and competency.
Scenario-Based Learning Activity
In the second module, social determinants of health, one scenario-based learning activity that supports learner skill development and motivates reflective practice is the case study group discussion via video presentation. A case scenario about health disparity can give the students several solutions, prompting them to learn new capabilities. To a great extent, working through a sophisticated case study in small groups enhances the collaboration and critical thinking skills of BSN learners. In addition, the reflective practice mandates a conscious effort to think about situations and design insights regarding what occurred (Savage et al., 2016). For learners, reflective thinking acts as a method of examining what an individual knows and what they require are not familiar with. Considerably, the academic nursing educators offer opportunities for reflective practices, mainly when developing learning environments, including small group activities, including PowerPoint discussion queries, to enable learning other students’ perspectives.
In this module, the discussion questions enable the learners to develop reflective thinking by making them comprehend the essentiality of the social determinants of health. As a result, the provided suggestions help in solving the health disparity’s case study existing socioeconomic issues. The scenario-based activity, including presenting a case study through small group discussion, motivates the learners to enhance their reflective thinking and problem-solving skills (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, n.d). The capability to assess the case study PowerPoint presentation offers a chance to discuss opportunities and victories for growth. Nevertheless, the discussion queries enable the learners to share ideas and reflect on their thoughts due to engaging with their peers. Therefore, they develop extensive and worthy student-centered learning and have a detailed comprehension and acknowledgment of the theoretical frameworks manifested in the classroom.
References
Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2019). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty. (6th ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences.
Gold, S. (2019). A constructivist approach to online training for online teachers.Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(1), 35-57.
Gorman, L. M., & Anwar, R. F. (2019). Neeb’s mental health nursing (5th ed.). F.A. Davis Company.
James F. M, Pinger, R. R., & Seabert, D. (2018). An Introduction to Community & Public Health (9th ed). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Leet, A., Dennis, S., Muller, J., Walsh, S., Bowen-Salter, H., & Kernot, J. (2021). Demonstrating the processes and outcomes of a rural community mental health rehabilitation service: A realist evaluation. Public Library of Science, 16(11), 1–18.
Muir, K. J. (2019). Historical perspectives informing modern-day nursing innovation and economics. Nursing Economics, 37(6), 284-284.
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (n.d.).Health care access and quality. Healthy People 2030. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Quality and Safety Education for Nurses. (n.d.). QSEN competencies.
Savage, C. L., Kub, J. E., & Groves, S. L. (2016). Public health science and nursing practice: Caring for populations. F.A. Davis Company.
The Incredible Journey. (2019). Florence Nightingale: The Lady with the lamp [Video]. YouTube.