Nursing Informatics: is IT for All Nurses?

Given the definition if nursing informatics it should be a core activity for all nurses, and seen as a tool to support high quality care giving. Three studies reported in this paper show that this is not the case. Qualified nurses are perceived as having poor skills and knowledge, and as being resistant to IT as it takes them away from patient care. Educators share this lack of knowledge, and neither academics nor students consider nursing informatics to be a clinical skill. In order to use computers while on placement students were found to need confidence in their skills, and to feel that the use of computers was encouraged. Socialisation into the profession is an important part of nurse education, and currently students are being socialised into a professional role where they are not encouraged to use computers, or to consider their use to be a key nursing task. If nursing informatics is to truly become a way of improving patient care this needs to be changed, and preregistration education is a key place to start to bring this change about

Effect of CPS on learning: Case Study 3. Theme: Collaborative learning in large groups

Working Paper in series eRes:Innovative e-Learning with e-Resource

Collaboration between Librarians and Learning Technologists to enhance the learning of health sciences students.

Collaboration between Librarians and Learning Technologists at Bournemouth University (BU) has been stimulated and cemented by Pathfinder funding from the Higher Education Academy. This paper will consider four case studies collected as part of the eRes Project that describe the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the School of Health and Social Care at BU. The project aimed to enhance the student learning experience in an increasingly electronic environment. This was achieved by developing and disseminating innovative pedagogical frameworks, bringing together learning activities and academically led quality e-resources within the unit of study. An e-reading strategy which encompasses models for resource discovery and e-literacy was developed, drawing on the experiences and findings of the case studies. Issues considered in this paper will include accessing academic electronic reading materials and using a social bookmarking tool integrated within BU’s virtual learning environment with students studying away from the main campus. Additionally the paper will consider how technology can be used to motivate students, especially in large groups and how it can be used to engage students with a subject perceived as “dry” or “difficult”. The rich possibilities of health science materials can be exploited more fully using new technologies embedded within the curriculum

Knowledge Retention Across Curricular Models: An International Collaboration

1Department of Anatomy and Regenerative Biology, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, 2Department of Surgery, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, 3Department of Human and Organizational Learning, The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 4Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, 5Department of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Physiology, The American University of Beirut, 6Faculty of Medicine & Medical Sciences Dept. of Biomedical Sciences, University of Balamand, 7Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neurosciences, University of Palermo, 8Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, University College Cork, Ireland Anatomy is one of the first subjects taught in medical school, and its retention over time has been strongly debated. Physicians have commented on medical students’ poor anatomical knowledge in surgically oriented clerkships. Literature also shows that correlating clinical and anatomical sciences throughout early medical education may improve anatomical knowledge retention. With major medical school curricular changes happening globally, more quantitative data confirming this correlation is needed. The medical curriculum at The George Washington University (GWU) School of Medicine recently transitioned from a discipline-based curriculum to an integrated system-based one, and an evaluation of anatomical knowledge retention between classes in the different curricula was conducted. Students from the last class of the discipline-based curriculum and those from the first and second classes of the new, integrated curriculum completed a 27-question test before starting their clinical rotations. Scores were then analyzed and compared between classes. The results demonstrated a significant increase in retention (p=0.012), with a mean score based on the old curriculum of 56.28% (SD=24.6%), as compared to a mean score of 63.98% (SD=23.48%) based on the new curriculum. The results show that integration enhances retention in the anatomical discipline. To strengthen these findings, we are conducting an international multicenter study, in collaboration with four other medical schools that have very different curricula: The American University of Beirut (Lebanon), Balamand University (Lebanon), Palermo University (Italy), and University College Cork (Ireland). A uniform baseline pre-test will be given at the end of pre-clinical anatomy instructions and a post-test will be given prior to students going into the relevant clinical rotations, and retention drop will be measured accordingly. The effectiveness of different curricula will be evaluated by comparing baseline and final test scores. This multicenter study will offer unique insights and comparisons of various curricular models