Advocacy Activity Report
On March 1st, 2018, I attended a CityTech RNBS curriculum Committee meeting as a student observer. The meeting is held by RNBS program curriculum committee. Professor Dato, professor Kontzamanis along with two other nursing students presented in the meeting. Dr, Rafferty joined us by conference call. The meeting is mainly about the sustainability plan for the SAMHSA-SBIRT student training grant. The meeting’s agenda includes: verification of enrolment & mid-term grades, eClass folders, clinical clearance, course updates, SBIRT proposal and some other items.
The verification of enrollment of every single classes is very important because it will affect financial aids. The mid-term grades should be posted around 7th to 8th week. The faculty should notify students of boardline score and be aware of unsatisfactory so the faculty could try to support students and improve students’ academic performance. For all the students who are in Associate and RN-BS programs, their clinical clearance are all clear for this semester. For the course updates, the systematic plan of evaluation form will be distributed to all the faculties. The systematic plan of evaluation aims at evaluate and assess the student learning outcomes.
The integration of into the curriculum of the RNBS program meets the commitment of sustainability in this program which is part of the SBIRT grant. In this program SBIRT (which includes Motivational Interviewing) will be threaded throughout the program in specific courses includes: NUR 3010 Physical Assessment, NUR 4010 Community Health Nursing and NUR 4110 Urban Health Nursing. The students will practice motivational interviewing in clinical settings and role play. In NUR 3010 Physical Assessment course, the motivational interviewing will be introduced to the students. The role play for the motivational interviewing will be added to this course.
During the curriculum meeting Dr, Rafferty also mentioned that CityTech will be offering the international programs for the nursing clinical courses. The clinical site will be held in overseas for a week. In the end Dr, Rafferty asked the suggestions from students about how to improve the nursing clinical programs. Several suggestions had been given—1, having flexible clinical schedule so students who work from Monday to Friday could come to clinical site during the weekends. 2, the sequence of the courses could be rearranged. For example: the NUR 3010 Physical Assessment could take after the three clinical courses or could take in AAS program instead of in RNBS program. 3, there should be more nursing classes opened during winter and summer sessions. The students were also encouraged to go to graduate school and they are welcomed to teach in Citytech after they get Master’s Degree.
The nursing clinical programs provides nursing students an opportunity to develop advocacy skills. The patient and family are at the center of the healthcare team and are its most valuable team-player. In the clinical programs the nurse can advocate to their patients by looking out for their desired outcomes, patient safety, and intervention with best practice guidelines. The clinical programs also provides insights into how nursing students practice patient advocacy in healthcare settings and how they may develop the role further, through formal education and workplace learning. Nurses can advocate for nursing as part of their daily activity whether they are nurse mangers, nurse educators or nurse students.
