Paper
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Integrating EBP into an Undergraduate Curriculum: Facilitating Faculty's Role
Rona F. Levin, PhD, RN, Lienhard School of Nursing/Education and Clinical Development, Pace University/Visiting Nurse Service of New York, Pleasantville, NY, USA
Academics often make assumptions about the knowledge and skill of nursing faculty. As we are teaching our students that the most important lesson is how to learn in order to keep up with the knowledge explosion, so we must also keep in mind that many faculty have come from traditional nursing programs at all levels of education. And depending on their year of graduation, faculty may not be well versed in specific areas that have recently developed, i.e., evidence-based practice (EBP). Therefore, in order to make any curriculum changes in areas with which faculty may not be comfortable, change theory needs to guide the process of EBP integration. And the process needs to start with facilitating faculty’s learning needs and supporting them in their effort to make change.Thus the Lienhard School of Nursing embarked on a five-year journey of faculty development, which included introducing the concept, threading it through one course (the graduate research course), moving toward integration into the overall graduate curriculum, then moving to undergraduate clinical faculty who had EBP workshops as part of their mentoring program. In addition, a visiting faculty member with expertise in EBP also presented guest classes in many courses, role modeling the teaching of basic EBP content for faculty. This presentation will share the process and content of the faculty development program that eventually led to full integration into the undergraduate curriculum.