Paper: Setting the Stage: Introducing EBP to Pre-Nursing Culture & Healthcare Students (19th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice)

Thursday, 10 July 2008: 1:15 PM

Roxena Wotring, MS, RN , Arizona State University College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation, Phoenix, AZ

Learning Objective 1: 1. The learner will be able to describe a teaching strategy to introduce EBP into a pre-nursing course.

Learning Objective 2: 2. The learner will be able to evaluate the use of technology in a culture and healthcare course to infuse EBP into a class assignment.

Watch out – there's a new generation of students knocking at nursing's door. They are called the Millennial Generation and they're coming with distinct learning styles (i.e. working in groups and using advance technology). As educators, our challenge is to incorporate these preferred learning styles and abilities into our teaching strategies.

In addition, faculty must also more formally and strategically introduce the basic concepts of Evidence Based Practice (EBP) into these pre-nursing courses. The convergence of these forces have led to the development of a technology-group-EBP project—a multi-media Ethnic Cultural Presentation.

The project begins when students self select into groups of six and choose an ethnic group from a pre-determined list. Their assignment is to do an extensive Internet literature search regarding the ethnic group's health beliefs, patterns of healthcare utilization and perceived barriers to nursing and health care; they also explore morbidity and mortality and socioeconomic factors. Finally, students' interview leaders from the ethnic community and investigate and/or validate the information gleaned from the literature and inquire about their insights and interactions with the healthcare system. The outcome of this phase of the project is to identify issues, problems or concerns that may be addressed from a nursing perspective and that leads to the next part of the project developing the EBP ‘burning question”.

The final projects are presented at the end of the semester. The technology-rich-multi-media presentations have been engaging, creative and well received. Students have reported they have gained insight, awareness and sensitivity into ethnically-specific health care issues as well as identifying possible EBP supported approaches to the problems identified. The entire project will be outlined in this presentation and will include student and faculty feedback about the group work, Internet literature searches and insights into the EBP process.

See more of: Strategies to Improve the Health of Culturally Diverse Populations
See more of: Research Sessions – Oral Paper & Posters