The Role of the BSN Nurse in Promoting Community Health
Course Outline
In this assignment, a course outline will be developed for a community health nursing course in a prelicensure baccalaureate nursing (BSN) program. This course will be for eight weeks, titled, “The Role of the BSN Nurse in Promoting Community Health.” It will meet for two hours each week, with an average class size of 40 students. This outline will incorporate the essential components that are required to develop an informative course for both students and faculty. The outline will include a brief course overview along with eight weekly course module topics and eight weekly key concepts. Up to two evidence-based active learning strategies will also be integrated each week. Next, justification will be provided for various aspects of the course’s outline, including how learners would benefit from taking the course, specific concepts emphasized in the course, and its relevance to professional nursing practice. Both the development of this course and how it promotes student-centered learning will be discussed, along with how the concepts align with the course overview and its relevance to the role of nurse educator. Then, three learning strategies will be discussed, including an explanation of how one of these strategies will be implemented, exploring how they address the diverse needs of learners. An examination of how student-centered outcomes in various learning environments, such as face-to-face, online, and clinical, will be presented. Finally, there will be a discussion of the nursing students’ cultural, societal, and life experiences, exploring how these can influence their learning abilities, while also examining a learning theory that can be applied when creating a nursing education course.
Course Outline Template
| Course Overview: This course introduces students to the role of the BSN nurse in promoting community health, focusing on community health nursing processes. Students will learn about how to conduct a community assessment, communicable diseases, professional nursing roles, principles of epidemiology, disease prevention levels, disaster preparedness, environmental health, and interprofessional collaboration in community settings. The three primary concepts will include health promotion, risk reduction, and disease management, with students learning how to promote these concepts across the lifespan. | |||
| Weekly Course Module Topics | Weekly Key Concepts | Evidence-Based Active Learning Strategies | Citation of Scholarly Sources Using APA Format |
| The role of the professional nurse in promoting community health, including reducing risk and disease management. | Pre-Class Assignment. Before the course begins, students, will be asked to research about CHN and its key terms. During class, they will be asked to review patient assessments and exemplars that are related to CHN and the role of professional nurses. | Ghasemi, M. R., Moonaghi, H. K., & Heydari, A. (2020). Strategies for sustaining and enhancing nursing students’ engagement in academic and clinical settings: a narrative review. Korean journal of medical education, 32(2), 103–117.https://doi.org/10.3946/ kjme.2020.159 | |
| 2. Principles of Epidemiology | The distribution, incidence, and possible control of diseases, including other variables relating to health. Frequency, pattern, and determinants of diseases. | Concept Maps. Students will create concept maps on the principles of epidemiology, choosing one disease or illness they would like to focus on. | Baliga, S. S., Walvekar, P. R., & Mahantshetti, G. J. (2021). Concept map as a teaching and learning tool for medical students. Journal of education and health promotion, 10, 35. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_146_20 |
| 3. Communicable Diseases | Illnesses that spread from one person to another through several routes, such as contact with bodily fluids and blood or breathing in an airborne virus. | Case Studies. Case studies will be examined, with lab tables, visual cues, and patient quotes used to promote discussion among the students. | Seshan, V., Matua, G. A., Raghavan, D., Arulappan, J., Al Hashmi, I., Roach, E. J., Sunderraj, S. E., & Prince, E. J. (2021). Case Study Analysis as an Effective Teaching Strategy: Perceptions of Undergraduate Nursing Students From a Middle Eastern Country. SAGE open nursing, 7, 23779608211059265. https://doi.org/10.1177/23779608211059265 |
| 4. Community Assessment | The collection and analysis of data associated with the needs and characteristics of a community, using a systematic process for identifying and addressing their needs. Community Diagnosis, Planning, and Intervention; Screening and Referral; Vulnerable Populations. | Windshield Survey. The students will conduct this survey from their care, offering a visual overview of a community of their choice. They will report on trends and conditions that may impact the health of those living there. | Ho-Asjoe, M., & Griffin, C. (2017). Windshield survey as a teaching strategy to effect community health nursing clinical outcomes in Canada. Journal of Nursing & Care. |
| 5. Disease Prevention Levels | Four levels of disease prevention: Primordial Prevention, Primary Prevention, Secondary Prevention, and Tertiary Prevention. | Nursing Simulations. Students will be broken into group, enabling them to practice hands-on procedures in disease prevention. They will use their critical thinking skills to determine which levels of prevention are appropriate based on the simulation. | Ghezzi, J., Higa, E., Lemes, M. A., & Marin, M. (2021). Strategies of active learning methodologies in nursing education: an integrative literature review. Revista brasileira deenfermagem, 74(1), e20200130. https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7167-2020-0130 |
| 6. Environmental Health | The relationships between people and their environment, promoting human health and well-being while nurturing healthy and safe communities. Environmental Health Risks; Health Impacts, Air Quality, Water Quality, and Sanitation. | Problem-Based Learning. Students will be presented with a specific environmental health problem, for which they will need to research evidence-based methods of community health nursing to address this issue. | Ghezzi, J., Higa, E., Lemes, M. A., & Marin, M. (2021). Strategies of active learning methodologies in nursing education: an integrative literature review. Revista brasileira deenfermagem, 74(1), e20200130. https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7167-2020-0130 |
| 7. Disaster Preparedness | Actions that are taken as precautionary measures to prepare for possible disasters and emergencies, helping to cope with the aftermath. | Peyton’s Four-Step Approach. Students will go through four steps in this approach as they prepare for a hypothetical disaster: Demonstration, Deconstruction, Comprehension, and Intervention. | Pivač, S., Skela-Savič, B., Jović, D., Avdić, M., & Kalender-Smajlović, S. (2021). Implementation of active learning methods by nurse educators in undergraduate nursing students’ programs – a group interview. BMC nursing, 20(1), 173. https://doi.org/10.1186/ s12912-021-00688-y |
| 8. Interprofessional Collaboration in Community Settings | Interprofessional collaboration involves two or more health care professionals working together to achieve the same goals. A Family Perspective in CHN; Multi-problem Families. | Role Play. The nursing students can take turns working in groups of three or more, as they take on various health care professional and patient roles to practice interprofessional collaboration. | Dorri, S., Farahani, M. A., Maserat, E., & Haghani, H. (2019). Effect of role-playing on learning outcome of nursing students based on the Kirkpatrick evaluation model. Journal of education and health promotion, 8, 197. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_138_19 |
Rationale for the Course’s Outline
Justification for Various Aspects
The course outline includes many of the vital aspects inherent in Community Health Nursing (CHN) that are necessary to promote community health, reduce risk, and manage diseases. First, the nursing students must learn about their professional role in CHN, including the processes that are frequently applied. These include being able to undertake community assessments, as this is necessary for community health nurses to be able to identify any areas of need within these communities. Since many communities suffer from communicable diseases, this is another important concept to include, not to mention the various principles of epidemiology and disease prevention levels.
By understanding disease distribution, frequencies, and patterns, community health nurses can use evidence-based preventative strategies aimed at the appropriate prevention level to help control the spread of these diseases. Furthermore, both environmental health and disaster preparedness are necessary learning concepts in CHN, especially as these may pose significant threats to communities’ health. Finally, in order to work effectively, there must be interprofessional collaboration in community settings, with health care providers working together to achieve shared goals for these communities. Therefore, students will significantly benefit from taking this course, as they learn about these various concepts that are especially relevant to professional nursing practice.
Cultivate Development of Course
These eight weekly course module topics will cultivate the course’s development, as the first week, the nursing students will explore the professional nurse’s role in community health and CHN. The three primary areas of focus for this entire course involves promoting health, reducing risk, and managing diseases in the community. The principles of epidemiology represent a key learning aspect within all CMH courses, as students must learn how to identify frequencies, patterns, and determinants of diseases, especially communicable illnesses and/or infections. The community assessment is a central concept within this course, as students must engage in community diagnosis, planning, and intervention, while identifying those populations that are most vulnerable. Similarly, the four levels of prevention must be clearly understood, so that nursing students can implement them in their communities, while also taking into consideration environmental health risks and impacts, including for air and water quality as well as sanitation. Similarly, disaster management and interprofessional collaboration are additional topics that need to be discussed to cultivate the course’s development.
Promote Student-Centered Learning
By teaching nursing students about the role of the professional community health nurse, they will learn about what responsibilities they have to not only individual patients and families, but also entire communities. One key responsibility is to understand the epidemiology of diseases, including communicable ones that are easily transmitted among people living in close contact with one another (such as in communities). Students will also learn how to conduct a community assessment, collecting and analyzing data about their own communities so they can determine if there are any existing health issues that need to be addressed. Primordial, primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention interventions will also support student-centered learning, enabling nursing student to promote health within these communities. Furthermore, it is imperative that community health nurses learn about the relationships between individuals and the environment, identifying any potential risks that may need to be mitigated. This is especially important when there are any disasters or emergencies that occur. Finally, students will learn how to work effectively with other health care professionals, while applying these skills to family health and addressing complex health issues. Therefore, student-centered learning is therefore promoted through these eight weekly key concepts.
Alignment to QSEN Competencies and Course Overview
Not only do these eight weekly key concepts align to the course overview, which mentions each of the eight course module topics, they also align to the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN, 2022) competencies. For example, the concepts integrate best current evidence with not only patient and family values and preferences, but also clinical expertise, enabling optimal health care to be delivered to patients (QSEN, 2022). This is known as evidence-based practice (EBP). Additionally, the concepts promote the use of clinical judgment within the nursing students, as they employ critical thinking skills (QSEN, 2022). However, perhaps the competency most applicable to this course is teamwork and collaboration, as there is a focus on interprofessional collaboration and communication among health care providers, as this is a necessary aspect of working as a community health nurse within CHN (QSEN, 2022). In this way, nurses can promote shared decision-making with not only other professionals, but also patients and families, with the collective goal of achieving high quality patient care and improved health outcomes within these communities (QSEN, 2022).
Relevance to Nurse Educator Role
Within the nurse educator role, nurses teach others the skills and knowledge that are required to promote health among patients, enabling other nurses to provide evidence-based care (Billings & Halstead, 2019). These health care professionals have many responsibilities, such as training both nursing students and existing nurses, whether within nursing school programs or clinical health care facilities (Billings & Halstead, 2019). According to the National League for Nursing (NLN, 2022), academic nurse educators oversee learning activities among student nurses and nursing staff, facilitating not only learning and development, but also learner socialization. Other activities for which they are responsible include evaluating and assessing student learning, while also participating in the development of courses and curriculums, as they examine student nurses’ learning outcomes (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Therefore, creating a course outline is extremely relevant to the role of a nurse educator.
Learning Strategies and Meeting Needs of Diverse Learners
In Peyton’s Four-Step Approach, which will be used for the course module on disaster preparedness, represents a learning strategy that includes four key steps that have proven to be extremely successful in nursing interventions, promoting students’ learning processes (Pivač et al., 2021). In Demonstration, the nurse educator demonstrates the intervention, although does not provide any verbal explanations; next, during Deconstruction, the educator performs the intervention, providing descriptions for all the intervention’s phases (Pivač et al., 2021). Next, Comprehension is when the educator actually performs the intervention, going by the instructions from the students; finally, during Intervention, the students take their turn performing the intervention independently, without the educator’s aid (Pivač et al., 2021). This method facilitates students’ active involvement in the learning process of learning, especially when they engage in the self-explanation process, thinking aloud to themselves (Ahmed et al., 2018).
For the course module topic on the principles of epidemiology, the concept mapping will be used. This is an evidence-based method to improve independent learning, as they refer to graphical representations of some concept being studied; by creating a concept map, the student can create a cognitive framework of the learning material, while providing the nurse educator with a better understanding of their learning (Baliga et al., 2021). There are many benefits to using concept maps as a learning strategy, specifically in that they encourage more meaningful learning, while also offering supplemental resources for students (Baliga et al., 2021). Furthermore, the educators can easily offer their feedback on these concept maps, so they can be used to assess students’ performances as well (Baliga et al., 2021).
Finally, a third learning strategy is the windshield survey, which is especially important in community health courses. Nursing students take drives through their neighborhoods and communities, providing information on what they see, with certain areas outlined for them to pay special attention to, such as potential resources and environmental hazards (Ho-Asjoe & Griffin, 2017). The Windshield Survey is an educational strategy that is used to impact CHN clinical outcomes, enabling students to scan communities where they then gather both subjective and objective data; they report on what they hear, see, and smell, with students looking at housing and food, public transportation, and community acceptance of diversity (Ho-Asjoe & Griffin, 2017). Through this learning strategy, students can learn to identify complex determinants of health within communities, while also appreciating how teams play a vital role in promoting community health (Ho-Asjoe & Griffin, 2017).
Implementation of Learning Strategy
To implement the Windshield Survey, students will be given a list of things to examine when they drive around their community. These will include Boundaries, Housing and Zoning, Signs of Decay, Parks and Recreational Areas, Common Areas, Stores, Transportation, Communication, Service Centers, People in the Community, Industries, Protective Services, Ethnicity, Religion, Politics, and Health and Morbidity (Ho-Asjoe & Griffin, 2017). They will then write an assignment where they describe these various aspects of their community, identifying three community health needs and choosing one to focus on. For this health need, they will describe interventions that can be used to address the issue, promoting health within the community. The predominant learning style is Kinesthetic, as students will be out within their communities, gathering and analyzing information. However, they will also utilize three other learning strategies as they complete their assignments, including visual, auditory, and reading and writing. This will enable students who have diverse learning needs to be able to excel in this module and course. Furthermore, the windshield survey will enable students to build upon their clinical reasoning and self-reflection skills, as they must determine what data is pertinent, while reasoning what types of interventions may be used to address health issues.
Fostering Student-Centered Outcomes
Student-centered outcomes can be fostered by nurse educators in various learning environments. For example, in face-to-face classrooms where didactic learning takes place, these are the traditional methods for teaching, enabling students and educators to work closely together. Additionally, in-classroom simulations and other hands-on activities can be utilized when educators are seeing students in person, while offering many different methods and strategies for learning, such as lectures and discussions. However, many of these can also be applied in online learning environments. In fact, there are not many online e-simulations available on electronic platforms, many of which enable educators and students to also remain in close contact. Again, lectures and group discussions can also take place online with the use of programs such as Zoom and other applications, while students are able to take courses from the comfort of their homes.
Nonetheless, nursing education requires clinical hours, so nurses can practice what they have learned in the classroom in real-world settings, caring for patients (or mannikins in real-world hospital simulations). Many times, the students work together in teams in these clinical simulations, where they collaborate as they care for hypothetical patients. Later on, once nurses have more experience, they will eventually treat real patients, where teamwork with their fellow students will be even more valuable. These clinical settings allow educators the chance to view students working in the clinical environment, rather than just learning course material and engaging in discussions. Therefore, all three of these learning environments give nurse educators the opportunity to not only teach students about nursing and health care, but also promote interprofessional collaboration and teamwork.
Students’ Influencing Factors for Learning
Nursing students’ cultural, societal, and life experiences all have the potential to influence their learning abilities. For example, for students who excelled in high school (or even elementary school), being proficient at taking tests and other assessments, they have life experiences that may help them with learning. They may have good time management skills, while also knowing how they learn best and what ways to ensure they take the course material and are able to not only remember its content, but understand it on a deeper level, so they can apply it in their nursing practices. As for societal and cultural, some students come from backgrounds where academic performance is a necessity, and where learning is considered to be a lifelong thing. All of these variables and characteristics can play a vital part in how someone learns, including the effort they put into their studies and how they go about achieving learning outcomes and goals.
Learning Theory Application in Developing Nursing Education Course
There are various learning theories that can be applied when developing a nursing education course. The cognitivist learning theory explains how students have cognitive functions that enable them to receive, store, organize, and retrieve information (Aliakbari et al., 2017). The cognitivist epistemology is frequently employed for teaching students, with educators needing to take into consideration their cognitive functions, including how they learn, think, remember, and use language (Aliakbari et al., 2017). Under the cognitivist learning theory, educators are more concerned with how students comprehend the concepts being taught, as they can even break down the information into smaller sections as needed to promote better connections in the mind (Aliakbari et al., 2017). Furthermore, educators realize that the knowledge that students already possess plays a part in learning new concepts and ideas (Çeliköz et al, 2019). Therefore, academic nurse educators may utilize cognitive learning theory principles, combining learning with comprehension to enable students to better learn new concepts and material; this theory also encourages students to remember their previous learning and knowledge, combining it with clinical experiences so they can apply everything in future nursing practices (Aliakbari et al., 2017).
References
Ahmed, F. R., Morsi, S. R., & Mostafa, H. M. (2018). Effect of Peyton’s Four Step Approach on skill acquisition, self-confidence and self – satisfaction among critical care nursing students. Journal of Nursing and Health Science, 6, 38–47.
Aliakbari, F., Parvin, N., Heidari, M., & Haghani, F. (2017). Learning theories application in
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Baliga, S. S., Walvekar, P. R., & Mahantshetti, G. J. (2021). Concept map as a teaching and learning tool for medical students. Journal of education and health promotion, 10, 35. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_146_20
Billings, D. M. G., & Halstead, J. A. (2019). Teaching in Nursing: The Faculty Role. In Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (pp. 1–13). essay, Elsevier.
Çeliköz, N., Erişen, Y., & Şahin, M. (2019). Cognitive learning theories with emphasis on latent
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Instructional Studies in the World, 9(3), 18-33.
Dorri, S., Farahani, M. A., Maserat, E., & Haghani, H. (2019). Effect of role-playing on learning
outcome of nursing students based on the Kirkpatrick evaluation model. Journal of
education and health promotion, 8, 197. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_138_19
Ghasemi, M. R., Moonaghi, H. K., & Heydari, A. (2020). Strategies for sustaining and
enhancing nursing students’ engagement in academic and clinical settings: a narrative
review. Korean journal of medical education, 32(2), 103–117. https://doi.org/10.3946/ kjme.2020.159
Ghezzi, J., Higa, E., Lemes, M. A., & Marin, M. (2021). Strategies of active learning
methodologies in nursing education: an integrative literature review. Revista brasileira de
enfermagem, 74(1), e20200130. https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7167-2020-0130
Ho-Asjoe, M., & Griffin, C. (2017). Windshield survey as a teaching strategy to effect
community health nursing clinical outcomes in Canada. Journal of Nursing & Care.
National League for Nursing. (2022). NLN core competencies for academic nurse educators. https://www.nln.org/education/nursing-education-competencies/core-competencies-for-academic-nurse-educators
Pivač, S., Skela-Savič, B., Jović, D., Avdić, M., & Kalender-Smajlović, S. (2021).
Implementation of active learning methods by nurse educators in undergraduate nursing
students’ programs – a group interview. BMC nursing, 20(1), 173. https://doi.org/10.1186/ s12912-021-00688-y
Quality and Safety Education for Nurses. (2022). QSEN competencies. https://qsen.org/
competencies/pre-licensure-ksas/
Seshan, V., Matua, G. A., Raghavan, D., Arulappan, J., Al Hashmi, I., Roach, E. J., Sunderraj, S.
E., & Prince, E. J. (2021). Case Study Analysis as an Effective Teaching Strategy:
Perceptions of Undergraduate Nursing Students From a Middle Eastern Country. SAGE open nursing, 7, 23779608211059265. https://doi.org/10.1177/23779608211059265
