Paper
Sunday, November 4, 2007

204
This presentation is part of : Strategies for Nursing Education
Using Concept Based Learning Activities to Promote Development of Clinical Judgment in Nursing Students
Ann Nielsen, MN, RN, School of Nursing, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, USA and Kathie L. Lasater, EdD, RN, School of Nursing, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
Learning Objective #1: Participants will describe how Concept Based Learning Activities (CBLAs) address educational challenges in the current clinical environment.
Learning Objective #2: Participants will consider and describe how to develop and use CBLAs in their own nursing education practice.
 Several forces are impacting clinical education in the early 21st century.  The clinical environment is changing as we see increasing patient acuity and increasing patient to nurse staffing ratios.  In many communities, the number of nursing students exceeds the number of clinical placements available.  An increasing body of evidence supports moving from teacher-centered to learner-centered approaches to education.  Furthermore active learning with a reflective component has been shown to be more effective in transforming knowledge than some traditional educational approaches.  In light of these changes, traditional approaches to clinical education need to be re-examined.  

 In this project, Concept-Based Learning Activities (CBLAs) have been designed to assist students in examining fundamental aspects of pediatric patient and family care.  Based on the Clinical Judgment Model (Tanner, 2006), CBLAs guide students to examine more deeply specific aspects of patient care, such as fluid and electrolyte balance, nutrition, oxygen- carbon dioxide exchange, and growth and development without responsibility for total patient care.  Doing the activity, students gather background information from the patient charts and textbooks, perform a hands on patient assessment focused on the concept being studied, then consider appropriate nursing responses to their findings.  Finally, they reflect on their nursing care and learning.  Use of the Clinical Judgment model as a framework for the CBLAs provides students with a consistent approach to thinking about and providing patient care.  Nursing rounds, done as a clinical group after each student completes study of his or her own patient, give students a chance to see how a specific concept presents in other patients, thus expanding significantly students’ repertoire of experience with a given concept.  Progress in the development of clinical thinking is evaluated using the Lasater Clinical Judgment Rubric. 

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