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Saturday, 29 October 2011
Learning Objective 1: recognize the educational value of a combined senior/sophomore clinical partnership.
Learning Objective 2: incorporate a senior/sophomore clinical partnership model into their academic program.
Sophomore and senior faculty collaborated to provide an innovative clinical partnership experience. Senior nursing students were paired with sophomore nursing students in a clinical area to enhance the development of leadership skills. The senior students were in their last semester leadership clinical rotation, which focused on the role of the nurse as a leader in the clinical area. The sophomore students were in their first adult-health clinical rotation, which focused on the nursing process, medication administration, and health assessment. The senior students were responsible for receiving shift report and relaying pertinent information to the sophomore students regarding their assigned patients. The seniors then assisted the sophomores with patient care, assessments, pathophysiology, medication review, and care planning. The sophomore clinical faculty provided supervision of the students when they administered medications or performed invasive skills. At the end of the clinical day, the senior students led a 15-minute post-conference which included evidence based information about one of the following topics: medication errors, pain management, post-op care, decubitus wound care, the nursing process, end-of-life care, cellulitis, and focused assessment. The senior students then met with the sophomore clinical faculty for debriefing and to give feedback regarding the sophomores’ strengths and weaknesses related to nursing skills, communication and interactions with patients, peers, staff, and the senior nursing students. Both seniors and sophomores were asked to reflect on the experience in their weekly journal. Responses were overwhelmingly positive on both sides. Seniors were amazed at how far they had come in their four years of nursing education while sophomores were awed by how much they will be learning!