AACN Essentials Nursing Practice Evolution Paper
AACN Essentials Nursing Practice Evolution Paper
Write an APA paper that discusses each of the AACN Essentials and describe how you met each essential. Incorporate evidence from your previous Nursing Evolution assignments, as well as detailed examples from your didactic, skills lab, and clinical rotations.
For each essential include the following:
- A brief summary explanation of the essential that is cited with at least one scholarly source
- At least one example of how you met the essential during your nursing program
Faculty Tool Kit NURSE FACULTY TOOL KIT FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BACCALAUREATE ESSENTIALS February 19, 2009 Table of Contents Page Overview 2 Integrative Learning Strategies Essential I Essential II Essential III Essential IV Essential V Essential VI Essential VII Essential VIII Essential IX 3 4 4 5 6 6 7 8 8 10 Opportunities for Program Enhancement 11 Helpful Web links, including Stakeholders 19 AACN Presentations 22 References/Bibliography 23 1 OVERVIEW The purpose of the Baccalaureate Essentials Tool Kit is to provide resources and exemplars to assist faculty with the implementation of the Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice (2008). The tool kit provides integrative learning strategies, opportunities for program enhancement, and resources that will assist faculty with the integration of the Baccalaureate Essentials throughout the nursing curriculum. This tool kit includes a review of the nine Baccalaureate Essentials followed by Integrative Learning Strategies, Opportunities for Program Enhancement, Web Links, AACN Presentations, and References. Baccalaureate Essentials Essentials I through IX delineate the outcomes expected of graduates of baccalaureate nursing programs. Achievement of these outcomes will enable graduates to practice within complex healthcare systems and assume the roles: provider of care; designer/manager/coordinator of care; and member of a profession. The nine Essentials are: • Essential I: Liberal Education for Baccalaureate Generalist Nursing Practice o A solid base in liberal education provides the cornerstone for the practice and education of nurses. • Essential II: Basic Organizational and Systems Leadership for Quality Care and Patient Safety o Knowledge and skills in leadership, quality improvement, and patient safety are necessary to provide high quality health care. • Essential III: Scholarship for Evidence Based Practice o Professional nursing practice is grounded in the translation of current evidence into practice. • Essential IV: Information Management and Application of Patient Care Technology o Knowledge and skills in information management and patient care technology are critical in the delivery of quality patient care. • AACN Essentials Nursing Practice Evolution Paper
Essential V: Healthcare Policy, Finance, and Regulatory Environments o Healthcare policies, including financial and regulatory, directly and indirectly influence the nature and functioning of the healthcare system and thereby are important considerations in professional nursing practice. • Essential VI: Interprofessional Communication and Collaboration for Improving Patient Health Outcomes o Communication and collaboration among healthcare professionals are critical to delivering high quality and safe patient care. • Essential VII: Clinical Prevention and Population Health o Health promotion and disease prevention at the individual and population level are necessary to improve population health and are important components of baccalaureate generalist nursing practice. 2 • • Essential VIII: Professionalism and Professional Values o Professionalism and the inherent values of altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and social justice are fundamental to nursing. Essential IX: Baccalaureate Generalist Nursing Practice o The baccalaureate-graduate nurse is prepared to practice with patients, including individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations across the lifespan and across the continuum of healthcare environments. o The baccalaureate graduate understands and respects the variations of care, the increased complexity, and the increased use of healthcare resources inherent in caring for patients (AACN, 2008). INTEGRATIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES Achievement of outcomes delineated in the Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice (2008) is enhanced through the intentional use of active, collaborative, and integrative learning strategies. The American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U 2004) defines Integrative Learning Strategies as powerful, active, and collaborative instructional methods that thread general education concepts throughout the major. Integrative learning strategies, as used in this document, expand on this definition and includes the integration of: • liberal education throughout the nursing curriculum • AACN Essentials Nursing Practice Evolution Paper
practice with theory • practice knowledge and theory across essentials • active learning strategies throughout the curriculum • interprofessional learning opportunities; and • learning activities across academic disciplines The purpose of this document is to provide nursing programs with examples of educational approaches that actively engage the learner and integrate liberal education, nursing science, clinical reasoning, and ethical considerations into both classroom and clinical learning. These examples are provided as a starting point to develop learning activities for the preparation of entry-level professional nurses and may be relevant to more than one essential. The learning strategies include a variety of methods, such as unfolding case studies, simulation, and reflective practice exercises to assist with implementation of a well-integrated curriculum based on the AACN’s Baccalaureate Essentials. By their nature, integrative learning strategies listed in this document may address more than one of the Baccalaureate Essentials. The following integrative learning strategies were developed by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Task Force on the Revision of the Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice with input from participants at regional meetings held across the Unites States in 2007-2008. These strategies are consistent with the work of the AAC&U (2007) and the Carnegie Foundation’s (In press) ongoing work on education in the professions. 3 Examples of Integrative Learning Strategies Essential I: Liberal Education for Baccalaureate Generalist Nursing Practice • • • • • • • • • • • Provide local, national, and international experiences, framed by reflective questions, in a variety of cultures, organizations, and communities. Promote activities and projects with students from the arts, humanities, and sciences to address community issues or problems. Use collaborative learning projects to build communication and leadership skills. Engage in community-based activities to promote ethical reasoning, advocacy, collaboration, and social justice.AACN Essentials Nursing Practice Evolution Paper
Provide opportunities to reflect on one’s own actions and values to promote ongoing self-assessment and commitment to excellence in practice. Provide guided exploration of diverse philosophies, ways of knowing, and intellectual approaches to problem solving. Use simulation exercises and case-based scenarios with students from other academic disciplines such as history, religion, business, and engineering. Provide direct experiences integrating artistic ways of knowing such as the arts, cinema, poetry, literature, and music to enhance the practice of nursing. Provide opportunities to observe and participate in various cultures through study abroad. Participate in interprofessional service learning activities such as health promotion and disease prevention projects for diverse populations. Use writing intensive assignments to promote reflection, insight, and integration of ideas across disciplines and courses. Essential II: Basic Organizational and Systems Leadership for Patient Safety and Quality Care • • Provide leadership experiences in a variety of organizations and communities. Provide opportunities for students to: o Engage in practice settings to build communication and leadership skills. o Communicate with recognized leaders to solve healthcare practice problems. o Develop a leadership or quality improvement project that spans several courses (e.g., review literature about a practice problem in one course, propose a practice change based on an evidence-based model in a second course, and then present the practice change to appropriate stakeholders in a third course). o Shadow a leader and reflect on the experience. o Engage in quality improvement/patient safety activities to promote an understanding of the organizational process, unit application, and evaluation process. 4 o Participate in quality improvement activities and/or required regulatory reporting systems. o Participate in interprofessional performance improvement team currently working on implementation/evaluation of national patient safety goals. o Propose an innovative solution to a system-related patient care problem identified in one’s clinical practice. o Conduct a mock root cause analysis on a near miss and share results with staff or shared governance council. o AACN Essentials Nursing Practice Evolution Paper
Participate in an actual Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and/or Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA). o Role-play with nursing and medical students using Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation (SBAR) communication o Attend a professional nursing organization meeting and identify personal development opportunities. o As students examine various microsystem committees, identify one for more in-depth exploration. Essential III: Scholarship for Evidence-Based Practice • • • • • • • • Ask students to select a clinical topic, search for evidence, and identify the level of evidence for each sample of evidence. Create journal clubs where students critique a primary nursing research article and its relevance to their clinical practice. Group students according to a clinical issue of interest, conduct a systematic review, and debate the rigor of selected research studies. Use controversial case studies to promote discussion about decision making and the evidence that supports those decisions (e.g., If you dropped the patient’s last pill, and each pill costs $35 …would you use it? or if a terminally ill patient asks you if he is dying, would you be truthful?). Collaborate with librarians to conduct comprehensive and efficient searches on clinical topics. Provide a sample of nursing journals and ask students to identify a research article and determine the type and level of evidence included. Assign student peer review of a student colleague’s paper.
