Paper
Friday, July 11, 2008
This presentation is part of : Developing Cultural Awareness in Nursing Education
Preparing Future Nurses for a Life of Civic Engagement: The Disaster Preparedness for Vulnerable Populations Project
Lynette Landry, RN, PhD and Harvey Davis, RN, PhD. School of Nursing, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA
Learning Objective #1: Describe how service learning can be incorporated into an undergraduate nursing curriculum.
Learning Objective #2: Outline the benefits of service learning in teaching students about the importance of civic engagement and social responsibility.

Community service learning has been utilized to teach nursing students how be become actively engaged in the communities they will be serving with varying degrees of success. Aim: The purpose of this report was to describe a collaborative service learning project to prepare seniors, disabled persons and the mentally ill for a disaster. Method: Students were required to write reflective journals about how the service learning experience will influence their future nursing practice. Results: Themes that emerged from the reflective journals included "concern”, “isolation and loneliness”, “neglect and marginalization” “increased awareness of vulnerable populations”, “new sense of civic engagement” and “bio-psycho-social diversity”. Conclusion: Though the project was successful, nursing faculty need to consider new teaching methodologies so that they can adequately mentor students through the community service learning experience.