Final Project: Digital Fluency for Nurses
Covenant School of Nursing (CSON) began the education of professional nurses in 1918 in Lubbock, Texas and has continually graduated students for the past 95 years. As a diploma model registered nurse program, CSON is owned and operated by Covenant Health, a subsidiary of St. Joseph Health. The mission of CSON, in alignment with Covenant Health, is “. . .to provide a quality nursing education founded on a correlation of evidenced-based best nursing practices, knowledge integration skills, and concepts of caring for the whole person . . . “. This course is being created to help pre-licensure nursing students identify and utilize evidence-based best nursing practices.
The students complete all prerequisite courses and are then enrolled in the nursing program full time. The program is divided into 4 nineteen week semesters and delivered as a hybrid model with the majority of the educational offerings in a face-to-face setting and some pre-class preparation via electronic resources posted on the learning management system (Edvance360). Digital Fluency for Nurses will be presented during the first (Freshman) semester to help developing students access digital resources and apply their findings to the care of their patients as they progress from simple care issues to more complex care delivery in later semesters. It will be the first truly online course our program has implemented.
The Covenant Health medical librarian will provide a classroom demonstration of proprietary databases most commonly used in healthcare research (i.e. CINAHL, Cochrane Library Database). This classroom activity will be provided as a reference point for inexperienced students to help them recognize reliable nursing literature. While both the librarian and the databases are available to the students throughout the program, many choose to use an Internet search engine such as Google or seek information reported in Wikipedia to research healthcare issues, most likely because they are more comfortable utilizing those Internet resources. The patients that they will care for will also be using common Internet search engines for questions about their conditions and care. It is vital that nurses use evidence-based care information both in the delivery of care and in the education of the patient.
As education refocuses on the learner's needs, the ability of the instructor to design student-centered materials is paramount to the success of the module. Our work in EDU 762 has allowed us to participate as a receiver of student-centered design and has allowed us to practice creating student-centered learning within this final project. As a final expectation for the course I've created, the student is expected to use evidence-based information to plan, implement, and evaluate nursing care, including patient teaching, for his/her assigned patients.
The students complete all prerequisite courses and are then enrolled in the nursing program full time. The program is divided into 4 nineteen week semesters and delivered as a hybrid model with the majority of the educational offerings in a face-to-face setting and some pre-class preparation via electronic resources posted on the learning management system (Edvance360). Digital Fluency for Nurses will be presented during the first (Freshman) semester to help developing students access digital resources and apply their findings to the care of their patients as they progress from simple care issues to more complex care delivery in later semesters. It will be the first truly online course our program has implemented.
The Covenant Health medical librarian will provide a classroom demonstration of proprietary databases most commonly used in healthcare research (i.e. CINAHL, Cochrane Library Database). This classroom activity will be provided as a reference point for inexperienced students to help them recognize reliable nursing literature. While both the librarian and the databases are available to the students throughout the program, many choose to use an Internet search engine such as Google or seek information reported in Wikipedia to research healthcare issues, most likely because they are more comfortable utilizing those Internet resources. The patients that they will care for will also be using common Internet search engines for questions about their conditions and care. It is vital that nurses use evidence-based care information both in the delivery of care and in the education of the patient.
As education refocuses on the learner's needs, the ability of the instructor to design student-centered materials is paramount to the success of the module. Our work in EDU 762 has allowed us to participate as a receiver of student-centered design and has allowed us to practice creating student-centered learning within this final project. As a final expectation for the course I've created, the student is expected to use evidence-based information to plan, implement, and evaluate nursing care, including patient teaching, for his/her assigned patients.
