Methods: Initial evidence was gathered for this EBP quality improvement project from electronic databases, journal references and citation searching articles derived from Pubmed, Cumulative Index to Nursing (Cinahl), and Proquest Doctoral dissertations. Additional evidence from research journals, expert opinion articles, and literature reviews were browsed in order to update any new pertinent information.
Data Analysis Peer-reviewed journal articles and books published between 2012- 2018 focusing on nursing education, best practices, and students with academic difficulty were identified (Polit & Beck, 2018).
Discussion: EBP change is a national policy imperative, un-avoidable in practice, (Craig & Smith, 2012). A plethora of evidence upon academic faculty and nurse educators base their EBP teaching practice is evident in the literature. Acknowledging concepts of support and peer mentoring was most influential helping students meet the expected standards (Walker & Verklan, 2016).The nurse educator role as a coach/mentor was very significant when facilitating students’ academic experiences towards success.
Results: King’s Theory of Goal Attainment confirmed the importance of establishing trust and bonding for students to reflect on the learning environment objectively, thus decreasing student anxiety. This was most effective for the mentorship and learner role. Building trust and promoting respect helped learners to grow inductively and deductively for engagement in critical thinking, a dynamic and influential intervention, promoting greater student satisfaction, overall academic gratification and achievement.This project improved student performance, satisfaction, retention, and turnover through an interpersonal approach to decrease student anxiety and stress in an associate degree nursing program. Interpersonal faculty-student review sessions, concept clarifications during motivating class discussions, open office hours for faculty-student bonding with peer engagement led to greater reduction in students with academic difficulty in two didactic medical surgical courses. Students improved learning and decreased academic difficulty with the average student scores consistently meeting the standards of above 77% in their end of course scores. In one of the classes, 100% of the students passed the course, while in the other course, students continued to improve to meet the passing standard consistently.
Conclusion: As students received inspiring mentoring experiences while preparing to study, they decreased their test anxiety and as a result learned more concepts at ease. They verbalized enjoyment with the faculty-student interactions as trusting and motivating preferential experiences in the classroom. This was a win-win both for students’ success as it was expected to produce graduates who can pass national boards and apply to RN-BSN program. Academic institutions serve their communities of interest most effectively by producing highly qualified graduates.
Implications A larger scale project would validate these interventions and explore evaluation variables to decrease stress and anxiety among students, including interpersonal clinical performance evaluations beyond didactic as teaching best practices. The education paradigm needs to be re-directed towards application and translational processes with EBP clinical application based on individual student specific needs.