Service–Learning in Undergraduate Nursing Education: Where is the Reflection?

Service–Learning is recognized as a valuable pedagogy that involves experiential learning, reflection, and reciprocal learning. Reflection is a critical component because it assists students to develop critical thinking and social awareness as they reflect upon their experiential learning with community partners. Although there is a proliferation of literature about service–learning, upon closer examination, it is apparent that some authors do not place emphasis on reflection when reporting on service–learning projects. This begs the question, “Where is the reflection?” The purpose of this article is to provide an overview and describe misrepresentations and exemplars of service–learning. After providing an overview of service–learning, examples of how service–learning is misrepresented in the literature are discussed. Exemplars of service–learning are also cited. Calling attention to how service–learning is reported in the literature will increase awareness about the need to critically evaluate articles for evidence of reflection

Service Learning in Undergraduate Nursing Education: Strategies to Facilitate Meaningful Reflection

Service learning is recognized as a valuable pedagogy involving experiential learning, reflection, and reciprocal learning. Students develop critical thinking and social awareness by using the crucial activity of reflecting upon their experiential learning with community partners. The purpose of this paper is to demystify the process of reflection by identifying best practices to enhance reflection and offering suggestions for grading. By understanding “the what” and “the how” of reflection, educators can implement service learning experiences designed to include the essential component of reflection. Strategies for facilitating meaningful reflection are described including descriptions of what students should reflect upon and how to initiate reflection through writing, reading, doing, and telling. Grading rubrics are suggested to facilitate evaluation of student reflection. When properly implemented, service learning encourages students to be good citizens of the world. By using best practices associated with reflection, students can be challenged to think critically about the world and how their service can achieve community goals

The effect of a perioperative nursing elective on nursing career paths

Nurse educators play a role in addressing the growing perioperative nurse shortage in the United States by implementing strategies to entice new graduates to this specialty. The purpose of our study was to determine if an undergraduate perioperative nursing elective influenced the career choices of nurses four to nine years after they graduated from a baccalaureate nursing program in the midwestern United States. Using a descriptive study design, 23 of 50 nurses responded to a survey about positions they have held since graduating and the influence of a perioperative nursing elective on their career choices. Twenty- six percent of nurses in this sample went on to work in the perioperative specialty, and the majority indicated they continued to consider perioperative nursing as a career choice. Considering the potential long- term effects of this strategy, incorporating a perioperative nursing elective into nursing school curricula could be helpful to address the shortage of perioperative nurses

Girl Scout Badge Day as a Service Learning Experience

Acquiring clinical experiences for students is a major challenge for nurse educators. One of the most difficult areas in which to secure clinical experiences is pediatric nursing; yet, nurse educators have a responsibility to create innovative strategies to assure that students have experience with pediatric clients. The purpose of this paper is to describe Girl Scout Badge Day (GSBD), a teaching strategy rooted in service learning. The strategy incorporates the three essential elements that distinguish service learning from other learning: experiential learning, reflection, and reciprocal learning. During this clinical experience, students provide health promotion education to scouts who subsequently earn badge requirements. Students are provided experiential learning as they implement the role of the teacher and reflect on the core values of nursing. In this paper, the specifics of implementing GSBD are presented and lessons learned are discussed. Benefits for students, scouts, troop leaders, and faculty are identified and improvements are suggested

Guided imagery as internally oriented self-care: A nursing case

The self-care deficit theory of nursing (Orem, 2001) provides nurses with a framework to create nursing systems that incorporate internally oriented self-care actions such as guided imagery. Internal orientations include “action sequences to control oneself (thoughts, feelings, and orientation) and thereby regulate internal factors or one’s external orientations” (Orem, 2001, p. 269). Imagery, a multi-sensory representation of an experience that uses imagination to invoke visual, auditory, smell, taste, sense of movement, position, and touch perceptions (Solomon & Saylor, 1995), is one form of internally oriented self-care. After differentiating between the external and internal orientations of self-care and describing guided imagery, linkages between the action sequences of external and internal orientations and specific helping methods used by nurses are made. A nursing case illustrating the use of guided imagery by a school-aged child to reduce pain is presented. A nurse with developed nursing agency in the domain of imagery, through select helping methods, assesses the self-care agency of the child and assists him to learn guided imagery. This nursing system created by the nurse broadens the child’s repertoire of self-care, resulting in a reduction of pain intensity reported by the child

Salivary Cortisol Testing in Children

Biological markers can identify links between human biology and human behavior. Cortisol, a marker of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis function, is a useful measure in research. Newer technology involving the measurement of Cortisol in saliva is being utilized in research studies. Salivary Cortisol measurement is inexpensive and noninvasive and offers many advantages over serum testing. Although there are various methods of saliva collection, it is relatively easy to perform in both infants and children. Salivary Cortisol testing may offer a significant measure for pediatric stress, coping, and health research