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Essay Instructions: Please research and comment on the following five.


1. A dynamic curriculum is one in which includes all of the concepts such as caring, self-care, diversity, growth and development, nursing process, adaptation, informatics and evidence-based practice and the identification of what is relevant for practice in the future. Requisite knowledge and competencies are centered around what nurses do with their knowledge through their education. Current health care trends that affect curriculum development and program outcomes include the increasing severity of patients' illnesses from acute care settings to community based settings and the increasing demand from the public for high quality health care at affordable prices. Other indices include increased emphasis on patient safety and quality assurance. (Billings & Halstead, 2012). One nursing educational institution acknowledged that most the changes have been promoted by the shifting of demographics, technology, informatics and the globalization of society. Nurses make up the largest number of providers of healthcare services continue to be essential. Their curriculum is subject to rigorous review and frequent adjustments. The nurse educator is challenged to stream line content and identify essential concepts to prepare the graduates for entry into practice. (Faison & Montaue, 2013). I think schools of nursing need to evaluate the clinical experience as well. Because hospital stays are shortened, other alternative practice sites need to be incorporated into the student's portfolio. Limited opportunities for skills such as IV insertion and complex dressing changes may not present themselves due to the hospital restrictions for the students. This particular school of nursing implemented webinars for the faculty to view, integrated new essential competencies into the nursing curriculum from the quality and safety education for nurses (QSEN). The results were positive in that the nurses continue to be delivery effective and safe care in their pre-licensure program. (Faison & Montague, 2013).

Billings, D., & Halstead, J. (2012). Teaching in Nursing A Guide for Faculty (4th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Saunders.
Faison, K., & Montague, F. (2013). Paradigm Shift: Curriculum shift. ABNF Jurnal, 24(1), 21-22.


2. There are a number of important areas in a dynamic nursing curriculum. To me, the following are the areas that are most important. Patient-centered care is essential in every nursing care curriculum as the patient is why we have become nurses. According to Morris and Hancock (2013), students and faculty agree that patient-centered care should be integrated into the curriculum. Students and faculty also agree that learning to be a part of an interdisciplinary team is needed in curricula. However, interdisciplinary team interaction is an area that needs work to ensure that the students are an active part of the team. Evidence-based practice is also an area that is very important. However, in the clinical settings this seems to be lagging in implementation. Applying quality improvement ranked low in both student and faculty opinion. However, I see this as a very important part of nursing curricula, as once you are in the work force this is a very important part of nursing practice. Utilizing informatics is an area that students and faculty agree is important to include in curricula as healthcare is required to use a computer system. The computer is also needed for classes the nursing programs and online learning.

To me, a dynamic nursing curriculum is one that gives the students a love of nursing, knowledge, skills, and competencies to have the basics to start their career as a professional nurse.

Reference

Morris, T. L., & Hancock, D. R. (2013). Institute of Medicine Core Competencies as a Foundation for NURSING PROGRAM EVALUATION. Nursing Education Perspectives, 34(1), 29-33. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.devry.edu/ehost

3. How could students motivate other faculty to continuously strive to improve curriculum?



4. "Competency statements identify the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students need to develop if they are to achieve program outcomes" (Billings & Halstead, 2012, p. 150). The advantage to utilizing a mid curriculum competency test or exam is to validate and assess, from the educator's perspective, that students are at the expected level of progress during a course timeframe. Students are expected to apply knowledge acquired toward patient case examples. The competency statements are valuable in determining the student's learning since it will provide the assessment for the student evaluation (Billings & Halstead, 2012).
Another advantage for the student with the mid curriculum tests is to confirm by test scores how they are acquiring and applying the course material into cognitive understanding. It can also become a tool for the student to assess their strengths and weaknesses in a given topic area where remedial assistance can provide improvement or to validate the effectiveness of their study skills and habits in a fast-paced, information dense curriculum.
A disadvantage to a comprehensive competency test is that faculty would need to spend additional classroom minutes to review previously learned material. Students can also feel that re-testing previously tested material can be very redundant, and not an area of priority for review.
Billings, D., & Halstead, J. (2012). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (4th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders.


5. One of the key components of a nursing program is to promote highly competent nurses that will have the ability, knowledge, and skills necessary to administer care to various individuals. Developing high levels of competency program accommodates nurses the knowledge necessary to provide the safe and efficient care possible. In such a complex health care as we have today the safety and the best outcomes of our patients is our priority. In order to measure the skills and competency of a nurse a test must be given such as a mid-curriculum which would be a great advantage for evaluation of success. According to our textbook, ?Learning occurs at various levels, and the level of learning needs to be explicit stated in the competencies faculty generated for each level within the curriculum.? (Billings & Halstead, 2009, pg. 151). A level of competency is something that achieve gradually as the student proceed to the curriculum, and one way to evaluate that competency is by testing. As mentioned by the author of our textbook, on disadvantage is that ?Students are often resistant to changes in the way in which they receive instruction because understanding new way of learning is stressful.? (Billings & Halstead, 2009, pg. 157). Any changes in life always bring stresses especially in the area of education where test involve, but the advantages outweigh the disadvantage in the long run. Not only passing a course is stressful but to some students financial burdens might be their greatest issues.

Billings, D., & Halstead, J. (2009). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (3th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders.

Essay Instructions: Please research and comment on 1 and 2. Question 3 please review the attached PowerPoints separately. What do you consider to be two of the greatest strengths of each of the curriculum you reviewed? Please justify your answers.


1. Over the next five to ten years there will be many changes that affect healthcare. The two main areas that I see are technology and the amount of older adults that will need acre. Technology doesn?t come as any surprise because it is continuously evolving and reaching new levels across the world. Ad technology improves, the way we deliver healthcare will to. As new technology emerges, there is also a newer technology that is behind it. It will continue to evolve and therefore healthcare will have to adopt new ways to better serve the population. The second area that will highly affect healthcare is the amount of older adults that will require healthcare. People are living, much longer today than in the past which means a whole new set of issues for the healthcare industry. First, how do we manage the diseases and how can we still promote illness prevention in this group. Another area of concern is the financial resources it will take to care for the increase in patient population. The healthcare industry already is seeing problems today, which is only going to get worse over time. There are also simply not enough providers to take care of the population, which means role changes for healthcare. Today we are already experiencing this, as nurses become nurse practitioners and are now the sole providers for many patients. ?Going forward, again with a potential reduction in the number of primary care providers, you are going to need technology to step in and fill some of the void? (Verdon, 2013). This may mean patient portal where patients can track health visits and results or maybe even face to face online with providers. Both issues will also change how education is delivered. They will require curriculums to be up to date with new technology emerging and the focus may change more to illness prevention, rather than treating illness.


Verdon, D. R. (2013). TECHNOLOGY STANDS POISED TO TRANSFORM. Dermatology Times, 34(12), 64-68.

2. Reflecting on this question, I think about the scope of changes that were seen and that came to be the norm during the 20th Century. It has been often stated that mankind ushered more changes during the 20th Century (true to the medical and nursing profession) than almost all of the previous 19th Centuries. Which makes one to think about the changes that will come about during the 21st Century. While profound changes will be seen in all disciplines, sciences and fields of endeavor, as well as nursing (and by default nursing curricula), the principal drivers of change affecting the dynamics of nursing curricula might be technology, demographics and environment.

If that basic premise is accepted, it is reasonable to think that nursing curricula will have to become more adept at accepting and including evidence-based technology changes, but at a faster pace than it is done today. One of the issues with technology innovations is that they are occurring at such a fast rate, that the user communities are having a hard time staying in step with the technology developers. A secondary issue on technology changes is that before those changes are inserted into curriculum or practice, they must be evidence-based validated. Included in technology, is the growth of on line education. ?As technology evolves, increased numbers of nursing programs have found that e-learning, simulation, and mobile devices offer much potential for nursing education (Billings and Halstead, 2012, p.96).

A second issue that, will impact the dynamics of curriculum are the effects from fast global changes that impact on demographics and environment. According to a report published by the Millennium Project, there are no less than 15 Global Challenges to humanity expected this century. Just about all of these challenges have an impact on nursing theory and practices and consequently on teaching curriculums. The 15 challenges include amongst others issues such as:

Science and Technology; Global Ethics; Population and Resources; Rich/Poor Gap; Energy; Status of Woman; Capacity to Decide; Health Issues, Global Convergence of Information Technology; Clean Water ; Peace and Conflict. From this list it appears that in all probability nursing curriculums will have to be periodically modified to ensure that nursing practices keep pace and accommodate and/or ameliorate the possibility of not being able to treat large population groups of diverse patients with many varied cultural and religious sensitivities, and, at a given time. Therefore, adjusting nursing curriculums to deal with these type of problems would appear to be a necessity. ?Curriculum should help nurses understand the influence of globalization on the transmission and treatment of disease. Nurses best prepared for changes due to economic forces understand 9596the significance of globalization and the global economy? (Billings and Halstead, 2012, p.96).

Billings, D., & Halstead, J. (2012). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (4th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders.

The Millennium Project. (2009). Global Futures Studies & Research. Extracted from http://www.millennium-project.org/




3. Please review the attached PowerPoints separately. What do you consider to be two of the greatest strengths of each of the curriculum you reviewed? Please justify your answers.

Essay Instructions: Discussion: Envisioning Future Needs


Nursing curricula cannot remain static for the simple reason that the needs of nurse-learners, patients, communities, and society do not remain the same. Rather, these needs change as a result of a wide range of forces. As Dr. Sarah Keating explained in the video program, curriculum developers must be visionaries??"seeing into the future to anticipate what the needs of individuals and the larger community will be.



Select the type of educational program and community of greatest interest to you, whether an academic, staff development, or patient education program. This should be a setting in which you would like to teach one day or are already teaching. Gather the kinds of information on this program that curriculum developers would need for an assessment about future needs of that community and those learners. Pay particular attention to external contextual factors, as discussed in Chapter 5 in Keating's textbook, Curriculum Development and Evaluation in Nursing. Based on this information, how should the curriculum evolve to meet the needs of learners and other stakeholders in the near future?



Note: Your Discussion assignments for this week and next, as well as your Applications, will ideally be based on the same program and curriculum, and require you to gather a variety of information on them. By focusing on the same program for all for all of these assignments, you will gain a more integrated picture of curriculum components and processes. To help you be more efficient in your information gathering, you are strongly encouraged to read the instructions now for Week 2's Discussion and the first Application, also in Week 2.



With this information in mind:



Post your assessment of future learning needs, addressing the following:





What is the kind of program and community setting you have investigated?


In general, what global or social trends are likely to affect the development of nursing curricula in this kind of setting in the next 5 to 10 years? Explain why you think so.


Assess three of the external frame factors listed in Curriculum Development and Evaluation in Nursing that are relevant to this particular program and community, answering the questions listed in the table.


On the basis of these external factors and future trends, propose two ways that nursing curriculum in this setting should evolve to meet the needs of nurses, patients, and communities over the next 5 to 10 years.




Your written assignments must follow APA guidelines. Be sure to support your work with specific citations from this week’s Learning Resources and any additional sources. Refer to the APA Publication Manual to ensure your citations in the text and reference list are correct.

Citations of video programs must also follow APA Guidelines. The following examples show how to cite a video in the text and bibliography.

Essay Instructions: Please reflect and research the following 4 separately.


1. I would definitely recommend the process of accreditation. As health care continues to change it is imperative that nursing as a profession develops academically and through continuing education so nurses can maintain their competencies. The Accreditation Changes at the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) ensures that the academic programs provide a curriculum that will satisfy the continuing health care changes. ?As a part of its ongoing effort to ensure that its programs and services are meeting quality standards and addressing current issues in credentialing, ANCC has recently embarked on a comprehensive review and modification of the accreditation (Desilets, Dickerson, & Dickerson, 2010).

Having a strong educational foundation can be advantageous for graduates, giving them the tools needed to successfully practice and be very marketable to many health care facilities, many of which may have been accredited themselves. ?Programmatic accreditation helps to ensure excellence in education through the systematic review of educational programs to determine if they meet standards established by the profession? (Wolfman, 2014).

Desilets, L., Dickerson, P., & Dickerson, P. (2010). Continuing nursing education: enhancing professional development. Journal of Continuing Education, 41(3), 100-101. doi:10.3928/00220124-20100224-07.

Wolfman, D. (2014). The importance of accreditation. Radiologic Technology, 85(4), 452-453.



2. Zorek and Raehl (2013) looked at the readiness of professionals in healthcare to work together when their education is completed. They found that nurses and pharmacists are the two professions at are the most ready to work together. Their curriculum contains classes on how to work with others while delivering patient care. Accreditation is how these programs maintain continuity of what is expected upon graduation.

I believe that it is necessary to have someone who is ensuring that nursing programs are providing the needed education for their students. The accrediting bodies provide a process to ensure that nursing programs are standardized. Accreditation is not mandatory, however, if you are not an accredited school, financial aid is discontinued. So, even though it is not required, this motivates the schools to be accredited.

Zorek, J., & Raehl, C. (2013). Interprofessional education accreditation standards in the USA: A comparative analysis. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 27(2), 123-130. Retrieved from http://cabarizona2011.org/sites/cabarizona2011.org/files/u9/IPE%20accreditation%20standards%20in%20the%20USA%20-%20A%20comparative%20analysis%20%28Zorek%20%26%20Raehl,%20JIC%202012%29.pdf

3. I would choose ?positive? as my response to incorporate non-nursing concepts and practices into the curriculum. Maslow?s theory comes to my mind immediately. Maslow?s concept of man is of a ?whole? functioning, adjusting individual who can best be understood from a holistic-analytical style (Fortin, 2010, p. 16). The meta paradigms which consist of person, environment, health and nursing is acknowledged in the school?s philosophy statement and used to develop the school?s conceptual framework (Billings and Halstead, 2012). When treating patients we take into consideration not only the patient, but also the environment surrounding them.

Fortin, J. (2010). Human Needs and Nursing Theory. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/189462463/?accountid=147674.

Billings, D., & Halstead, J. (2012). Teaching in nursing: A guide to faculty (4th ed.). St Louis, MO: Saunders


4. Nursing is a separate entity although the healthcare environment is a multidisciplinary team approach. Usually in a nursing curriculum, there are nursing and non-nursing theory which are very beneficial to the nursing students. for example Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs, this is a non-nursing theory which are very useful in the nursing profession. According to ANA, ?Maslow conceptualized human needs as a pyramid with five levels in ascending order, ranging from physiologic needs at the base, through safety, belonging, and esteem, to self-actualization at the apex of the pyramid. Maslow posited that people are innately motivated toward psychological growth and self-development.? (Paris & Terhaar, 2011). I honestly think that Maslow?s theory is extremely beneficial to the nursing profession and very beneficial in a nursing curriculum. Base on my understanding, it is positive to incorporate non-nursing concepts and practices into your curriculum.

Paris, L., Terhaar, M. 2011. Using Maslow?s Pyramid and the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators? to Attain a Healthier Work Environment. Retrieved from: http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-16-2011/No1-Jan-2011/Articles-Previous-Topics/Maslow-and-NDNQI-to-Assess-and-Improve-Work-Environment.html