Collaborative Partnership as a Pedagogical Strategy to Teach Research and Evidence-Based Practice to Undergraduate Nursing Students

Paper

Thursday, 20 July 2006

This presentation is part of : The Development and Implementation of a Collaborative Partnership Between Practice and Education for Research and Evidence-Based Practice

Louann Zinsmeister, DNSc, MS, BSN, Nursing, Messiah College, Grantham, PA, USA and Carolyn Kreamer, PhD, RN, Department of Nursing, Messiah College, Grantham, PA, USA.

Helping undergraduate nursing students appreciate the value and importance of nursing research for clinical practice has long challenged nurse educators. Research Roundtable, a collaborative partnership between an urban healthcare system and a baccalaureate nursing program, provided a unique opportunity to help undergraduate nursing students make meaningful connections between classroom concepts in nursing research and nursing practice problems. Since nursing students were learning unfamiliar research concepts and concurrently applying evidence-based protocols to solve a clinical problem or question, the traditional nursing research course content was sequenced to assist students to comprehend how evidence-based practice arises from traditional research. Over the three years of collaboration, the content and structure of the learning activities changed; however, the use of working teams of staff nurses, nursing students, advance practice nurse facilitators, and faculty consultants was consistent. Eventually, one-third of the undergraduate research course was devoted to this collaborative learning strategy, and students’ course expectations and grading were adjusted to reduce student stress and encourage active participation in the collaborative projects. Students were required to maintain a reflective journal of their experiences and actively participate in all aspects of the collaborative projects including library searching, research critique, in-class presentations, poster presentations, and research conference presentations. The learning activities evolved from the actual planning and implementation of a research project to the exploration of clinical practice questions using evidence-based practice processes. Data from student course evaluations and other evaluations demonstrated that students more readily embraced the value of nursing research to practice, felt more empowered to use research findings in their own practice, and valued the opportunity to collaborate with practicing nurses on an actual clinical question or problem. A distinct advantage of this collaborative partnership was the synergy among the nurses’ clinical practice expertise, the nursing students’ information management skills, and faculty knowledge of research.

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See more of The 17th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice (19-22 July 2006)