Improving health policy competency through collaboration and enhanced curriculum delivery

Civic knowledge and self-reported political astuteness of academic nurse educators in the United States

BACKGROUND

A nurse's perspective is unique and invaluable to health policy. Although political astuteness is essential for nurses and nurse educators to be effective participants in health policy, there is a gap in the nursing literature on civic knowledge and its potential relationship to political astuteness.

PURPOSE

This research aimed to assess the civic knowledge and self-reported political astuteness of academic nurse educators, their associated factors, and the relationship between these two concepts.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study used a national sample of academic nurse educators who answered 10 questions taken from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Naturalization test and completed the Political Astuteness Inventory (PAI).

RESULTS

Over 51 % of the sample (n = 122) did not provide enough correct answers to pass the Naturalization test and over 35 % were determined to be either completely or slightly unaware politically. There was a medium positive correlation (r = 0.313, p < .001) between civic knowledge and self-reported political astuteness.

CONCLUSION

Although nurse educators could be well-positioned to impact health policy, they may not have the knowledge or skills to fulfill this potential. Strategies for improving political astuteness include increasing civic knowledge and encouraging professional collaboration to promote nursing solidarity, influence, and power.

Legislative Advocacy on Capitol Hill: Experiential Learning for Nursing and Midwifery Students

BACKGROUND

Policies, regulations, and laws influence all aspects of health care, including the education of health care professionals, independent practice, and patient access to care. Health equity and social justice are mediated through policy.

PROBLEM

While health policy knowledge and skills are recognized as essential competencies within nursing and midwifery curricula, most students graduate with limited or no experience engaging in advocacy efforts to advance legislation that would improve health systems and the delivery of care.

APPROACH

An experiential learning activity is described that gives students authentic experience in federal legislative advocacy.

OUTCOMES

Students report powerful, positive learning from interacting with their legislators.

CONCLUSION

Support of a legislative advocacy experiential learning activity requires ongoing faculty initiative and can promote advancement of health policy bills into law. Opportunities to participate in legislative advocacy need to be expanded within nursing and midwifery education to cultivate leaders who can effect policy change.

A program quality framework: a collaborative teaching team approach to quality assurance, quality enhancement and staff capacity building

A global shortage of registered nurses provides a further impetus to retain nursing students and graduate safe nurses. While various frameworks support curriculum design and describe the need for ongoing curriculum evaluation and monitoring, there is little in the literature to support the enactment and ongoing quality enhancement of curricula. Translation of the curriculum plan into the delivered curriculum relies on academics who may or may not be adequately prepared for course writing and teaching in higher education settings, despite their discipline expertise. Additionally, there are well recognized issues of curriculum drift where curriculum innovations and changes are whittled away over time by incremental changes to courses that interfere with the integrity of the accredited curriculum. We propose an evidence-based Program Quality (ProQual) Framework that takes a holistic, collaborative, and systematic approach to monitoring and enhancing curriculum quality and program delivery over the life of the curriculum while developing staff capability and scholarship.