Culturally and linguistically diverse nursing students' experiences of integration into the working environment: A qualitative study

Background Understanding how culturally and linguistically diverse students experience clinical practice and their competence development is important to retaining registered nurses. This study aimed to describe culturally and linguistically diverse students' experiences of clinical practice, perceptions of their career path, and intentions to stay in the nursing profession. Methods A descriptive qualitative study was conducted. The participants were culturally and linguistically diverse nursing students (n = 22) from six Finnish higher education institutions. Nine focus-group interviews, with up to six students per group, were conducted during the spring and summer of 2021. Data were analysed using inductive content analysis. Results The factors which affected culturally and linguistically diverse students' intentions to stay in nursing profession in Finland consisted of support during university studies and clinical practice, perceived equality, nursing competence development, successful integration into the workplace and social life, and clinical practice experiences. Conclusions The results support the development of a model for culturally and linguistically diverse nurses' integration into the Finnish health care settings by identifying the key factors for an effective transition to the profession

Health and Social Care Educators' Competence in Digital Collaborative Learning: A Cross-Sectional Survey

The ongoing change from traditional pedagogy to digital collaborative learning requires a new mode of teaching, learning, and educators' responsibilities. For competence in digitally mediated teaching, educators need understanding of how to provide appropriate digital environment to learn collectively and individually. The aim of this study was to describe and explore health and social care educators' perceptions of their current level of competence in digital collaborative learning and identify distinct educators' profiles. Data were collected via cross-sectional survey from educators in 21 universities of applied science and eight vocational colleges in Finland using an instrument covering two subdimensions: educators' competence in fostering construction of knowledge in digital collaborative learning, and supporting students in individualized collaborative learning. The data were analyzed by statistical methods. Three significantly differing clusters of educators' profiles were identified, and a significant association between type of current work organization and their self-reported competence in digital collaborative learning was found. The vocational college educators rated their competence in fostering construction of knowledge in digital collaborative learning as significantly lower than higher education educators. There were also remarkable differences in competence in supporting students' individual collaborative learning. To provide such support, sufficient competence in teaching in digital learning environment is essential, and our study highlights clear needs to enhance this competence

Qualitative study of social and healthcare educators' perceptions of their competence in education

Competent educators are needed to ensure that social and healthcare professionals are effective and highly competent. However, there is too little evidence-based knowledge of current and required enhancements of educators' competences in this field. The aim of this study was to describe social and healthcare educators' perceptions of their competence in education. The study had a qualitative design, based on interviews with educators and rooted in critical realism. Forty-eight participants were recruited from seven universities of applied sciences and two vocational colleges in Finland, with the assistance of contact persons nominated by the institutions. The inclusion criterion for participation was employment by an educational institution as a part-time or full-time, social and/or healthcare educator. Data were collected in the period February-April 2018. The participants were interviewed in 16 focus groups with two to five participants per group. The acquired data were subjected to inductive content analysis, which yielded 506 open codes, 48 sub-categories, nine categories and one main category. The educators' competence was defined as a multidimensional construct, including categories of educators' competences in practicing as an educator, subject, ethics, pedagogy, management and organisation, innovation and development, collaboration, handling cultural and linguistic diversity, and continuous professional development. Educators recognised the need for developing competence in innovation to meet rapid changes in a competitive and increasingly global sociopolitical environment. Enhancement of adaptability to rapid changes was recognised as a necessity. The findings have social value in identifying requirements to improve social and healthcare educators' competence by helping educational leadership to improve educational standards, construct a continuous education framework and create national and/or international curricula for teacher education degree programs to enhance the quality of education. We also suggest that educational leadership needs to establish, maintain and strengthen collaborative strategies to provide effective, adaptable support systems, involving educators and students, in their working practices

Impacts of chemical gradients on microbial community structure

Succession of redox processes is sometimes assumed to define a basic microbial community structure for ecosystems with oxygen gradients. In this paradigm, aerobic respiration, denitrification, fermentation and sulfate reduction proceed in a thermodynamically determined order, known as the ‘redox tower’. Here, we investigated whether redox sorting of microbial processes explains microbial community structure at low-oxygen concentrations. We subjected a diverse microbial community sampled from a coastal marine sediment to 100 days of tidal cycling in a laboratory chemostat. Oxygen gradients (both in space and time) led to the assembly of a microbial community dominated by populations that each performed aerobic and anaerobic metabolism in parallel. This was shown by metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and stable isotope incubations. Effective oxygen consumption combined with the formation of microaggregates sustained the activity of oxygen-sensitive anaerobic enzymes, leading to braiding of unsorted redox processes, within and between populations. Analyses of available metagenomic data sets indicated that the same ecological strategies might also be successful in some natural ecosystems