| Learning Objective #1: Describe roles of the major participants in the Collaborative Community Connections (CCC) Model | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Discuss the strengths of this partnership model for the students' primary, secondary, and serendipitous learning |
Rapid change in health care economics challenges nurse faculty members to develop meaningful clinical experiences, grounded in the community, for undergraduate students who as tomorrow's registered nurses will practice in diverse settings. Faculty members teaching Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing, a second semester junior year or first semester senior year course, developed the Collaborative Community Connection (CCC) model with key community agency personnel, clients and students. This model promotes an advocacy-partnership approach to the teaching-learning process in which all participants, including clients, knowingly contribute to students learning. Individual clients, most of whom are challenged by persistent mental illness, contract with individual students so that each student is provided with specific identified experiences. Clients verbalize that the outcomes of these experiences enable students to provide more effective and compassionate interventions to persons experiencing psychiatric disabilities. Students contract with both individual clients and small client groups to accomplish short term outcomes within a fourteen week semester. Other contractual partnerships are formed with community agencies, other disciplines, legislators, advocacy groups, faculty and peers.
Focus groups and written assessments are completed at semester's end to assess the CCC model's effectiveness in psychosocial clubhouses, rehab programs and hospital settings. Findings reveal several strengths of the CCC model: a) Students are exposed to primary, secondary and serendipitous learning communities; b) It contributes to students' positive perceptions of clients' importance in the teaching-learning process; c) It promotes long term collaborative relationships with faculty, agency staff and clients; and d) Students describe their enhanced ability to apply psychiatric-nursing concepts to other client groups.
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