Dedicated Education Units: Process and Outcomes

A dedicated Education Unit (DEU) is a strategy to provide learners with a learning-rich clinical experience.  The dedicated education unit (DEU) model of clinical nursing education is rapidly gaining popularity.  A key word search in CINAHL revealed 23 articles and one dissertation focused on the concept were published in the past three years.  However, these articles primarily focused on the use of the DEU on general adult inpatient units in acute care settings.  .  Providing a rich and practice-dense learning environment is critical especially in areas of practice such as mother-baby or labor and delivery (Raines, 2016).  The DEU model of clinical education is a potential solution to the shortage of clinical placements as well as a strategy to enrich the quality of the students’ learning opportunities.   Reports by the Carnegie Foundation, Institute of Medicine (IOM) and Robert Woods Johnson Foundation call for nurse leaders to improve how nurses are prepared and educated by reducing the gap between classroom and clinical teaching (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2010; Institute of Medicine, 2010a; Goldman, 2014).  In addition the IOM future of nursing report encourages collaboration among organizations to better prepare nurses to deliver high quality care (Institute of Medicine, 2010b).  The DEU model is a strategy to fulfill these objectives

This presentation will outline the process of establishing a DEU on a mother-baby and Labor and Delivery unit for junior students in a BSN program.  In a DEU environment students participate in hands-on patient care, plan nursing care and perform nursing skills, in addition to learning to manage a full patient-care assignment, communication with other health care professionals and to working as part of the team.  Learners and the DEU nurses have collaborated on projects to improve quality of care on the unit and to promote evidence based practice.  These professional activities have resulted in presentations at local STTI research events and publication in the nursing literature. To provide evidence of the learning outcomes, forty-eight students participated in a pre-clinical/post-clinical survey.  Twenty-four students were on a DEU and 24 students were on a traditional clinical unit.  Analyses of these data indicate students on the DEU acquired a greater number of nursing practice skills and professional behaviors.  In addition many of the DEU students identified something learned from their DEU nurse which the will continue to use in their career as a nurse. 

At the end of this presentation the audience will have the basic tools and knowledge to initiate and evaluate a DEU.

References: 

Benner, P., Sutphen, M,  Leonard, V. & Day, L (2010).  Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation.  Carnegie Foundation.

Goldman, T.R. (2014).  Charting Nursing's Future.  Robert Woods Johnson Foundation web site:  http://www.rwj.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issues brief/2014/rwj415763. 

Institute of Medicine. (2010a).  The future of nursing:  Leading change, advancing health.  Washington, D.C.  National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine. (2010b). The Future of Nursing Focus on Education.  Washington, D.C.  National Academies Press.

Raines, D.A. (2016)  A Dedicated Education Unit for MAternal-Newborn Nursing Clinical Education. Nursing for Womens HEalth;20(1):20-7. doi: 10.1016/j.nwh.2015.12.005. Epub 2016 Feb 12.

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