Impact of an intensive nursing education course on nurses' knowledge, confidence, attitudes, and perceived skills in the care of patients with cancer

Purpose/Objectives: To evaluate the impact of a cancer nursing education course on RNs. Design: Quasi-experimental, longitudinal, pretest/post-test design, with a follow-up assessment six weeks after the completion of the nursing education course. Setting: Urban, nongovernment, cancer control agency in Australia. Sample: 53 RNs, of whom 93% were female, with a mean age of 44.6 years and a mean of 16.8 years of experience in nursing; 86% of the nurses resided and worked in regional areas outside of the state capital. Methods: Scales included the Intervention With Psychosocial Needs: Perceived Importance and Skill Level Scale, Palliative Care Quiz for Nurses, Breast Cancer Knowledge, Preparedness for Cancer Nursing, and Satisfaction With Learning. Data were analyzed using multiple analysis of variance and paired t tests. Main Research Variables: Cancer nursing-related knowledge, preparedness for cancer nursing, and attitudes toward and perceived skills in the psychosocial care of patients with cancer and their families. Findings: Compared to nurses in the control group, nurses who attended the nursing education course improved in their cancer nursing-related knowledge, preparedness for cancer nursing, and attitudes toward and perceived skills in the psychosocial care of patients with cancer and their families. Improvements were evident at course completion and were maintained at the six-week follow-up assessment. Conclusions: The nursing education course was effective in improving nurses' scores on all outcome variables. Implications for Nursing: Continuing nursing education courses that use intensive mode timetabling, small group learning, and a mix of teaching methods, including didactic and interactive approaches and clinical placements, are effective and have the potential to improve nursing practice in oncology.

Research utilization among pediatric health professionals

The present study investigated research use and attitudes toward research among pediatric health professionals. All nurses and allied health professionals in a pediatric teaching hospital were surveyed using previously tested and published measures. Over half of the participants had some formal education in research but, for some participants, that education was many years ago. Most participants reported poor or very poor understanding of research design. Two variables were independently associated with a positive attitude towards research: (i) better understanding of how to conduct a literature search; and (ii) higher level of education. Five variables were independently associated with research use: better understanding of research design; having presented at a conference in the past two years; sense of calling to the profession; better understanding of how to conduct a literature search; and attending rounds. A small proportion of variance in both research use and a positive attitude towards research was explained by the independent predicator variables. Further research is required to identify characteristics of the workplace environment that support research use.

Dilemmas in Framing Research Studies in Engineering Education

There has been considerable debate about the need for more empirical, evidence based studies of the impact of various interventions and practices in engineering education. A number of resources including workshops to guide engineering faculty in the conduct of such studies have emerged over recent years. This paper presents a critique of the evolution of engineering education research and its underlying assumptions in the context of the systemic reform currently underway in engineering education. This critique leads to an analysis of the ways in which our current understanding of engineering, engineering education and research in engineering education is shaped by the traditions and cultural characteristics of the profession and grounded, albeit implicitly, in a particular suite of epistemological assumptions. It is argued that the whole enterprise of engineering education needs to be radically reconceptualized. A pluralistic approach to framing scholarship in engineering education is then proposed based on the principles of demonstrable practicality, critical interdisciplinarity and holistic reflexivity. This new framework has implications for engaging and developing faculty in the context of new teaching and learning paradigms, for the evaluation of the scholarship of teaching and for the research-teaching nexus.

The nurse lecturer role in clinical practice conceptualized: helping clinical teachers provide optimal student learning

Despite the fairly wide reporting in the literature of the ma ny roles of clinical supervision by the nursing teacher, little attention has been given to conceptualizing the relative priorities these roles take during the process of supervising nursing students in clinical practice. The purpose of this paper is to consider the manifestations and implications of conflicting roles when nurse lecturers undertake clinical supervision. Previously published research will provide working examples of issues in a conceptual framework for clinical teaching.