Reimagining Clinical Experiences for RN-BSN Students in Population Health: Collecting the Evidence

Purpose: It has been a decade since Benner et al. (2010) called for a radical transformation in nursing education with an emphasis on experiential learning. Slowly, innovations in providing new ideas for clinical experiences for students are making their way into the literature. However, ideas for new clinical experience models for courses in population health involving health promotion and disease prevention are virtually absent in the literature. This is the story of one RN-BSN program’s pilot project to replace traditional “clinical placements” with a new approach. Evidence that a change was needed included: 1) students rated their clinical population health placements in various community agencies as “the least favorite part of their program”, 2) faculty reported that the students’ clinical experiences did not fully enhance the learning of the competencies of population health, 3) with the initiation of the online program, faculty reported that they felt less control over the quality of experiences that were occurring beyond the school’s geographic location. After brainstorming ideas, faculty created the “Population Health Project” as an alternative to the traditional “shadow” experiences that are a common tradition in most nursing programs.

Methods: In this project, students self-select a prevalent public health issue from Healthy People 2020. Using tools of environmental scanning, ethnography and qualitative interviewing, students explore the health issue within the context of a self-selected community from multiple perspectives and disciplines. Students use this assessment to propose effective community health promotion/disease prevention interventions. Faculty devised an assessment tool to measure effectiveness.

Results: After two years of implementation, student evaluations of the clinical experience in their population health course have improved 62% in comparison to evaluations of the prior model of traditional clinical placements. End-of-program student reports also showed a significant increase in students’ report of positive learning in nursing research, evidence-based practice, investigative skills, and interprofessional communication skills. Faculty cited examples of student growth in leadership skills, communication and collaboration skills. In sum, this type of clinical experience demonstrated an increase in student skills beyond learning the competencies of population health.

Conclusion: This was a single-site action research project that is not generalizable. However; the successes of the “Population Health Project” may be an indication that nursing education can reimagine traditional clinical experiences with innovative experiential learning for students in population health curricula. More innovations targeted on best practices in providing experiential learning for population health curricula need to be shared in the nursing literature before trends and methods of evaluation can be developed.

Benner, P., Sutphen, M., Leonard, V., Day, L. (2010). Educating nurses: A call for radical transformation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.