Nursing and the Modern Curricula

¶ … curriculum development must be a dialogue between its designers and the affected stakeholders: if a curriculum is imposed upon students and faculty members, they will inevitably resist it. Common agreement amongst faculty members also fosters greater agreement in regards to shared standards between teachers when grading. I also agree that it is important that students feel they are being evaluated fairly and that certain standard classes used to meet requirements are not substantially easier or harder than the same classes taught by different teachers.

In particular with a nursing education, uniformity is desirable since nurses are taking classes to attain professional qualifications and pass licensure exams. However, although getting people 'on board' with the curriculum is important, it is also vital that the curriculum is flexible enough and able to change with today's needs. The nursing curriculum cannot be static and mired in outdated standard operating procedures. "Today's educators are helping nursing students gain the clinical reasoning skills they need in the practice arena.

Revamped educational programs promote clinical reasoning through situated cognition -- the concept that knowing is inseparable from doing and that learning occurs in context" (Allen 2013). There is an increasing emphasis in nursing curriculums on teaching students to think independently, given the greater and greater responsibilities nurses are being asked to shoulder in healthcare institutions. We live in an era where cutting costs has resulted in many institutions shifting the burdens once largely assumed by doctors in regards to diagnosis and treatment to nurses.

Students must learn how to think as nurses and not merely regurgitate information. Reference Allen, P. (2013). Preparing nurses for tomorrow's healthcare system. American Nurse Today. Retrieved from: http://www.americannursetoday.com/article.aspx?id=10304&fid=10226 Q2. The stakeholders of an educational intuition are often much broader than immediately 'meets the eye.' The most obvious stakeholders include faculty and students, but even members of the community as well as non-academic staff have a stake in the curriculum's development.

For example, future patients who will be treated by the students and future colleagues of the nurse such as physicians, physician's assistances, and administrators will be affected by the education dispensed to the student. This is why it is so critical that the curriculum is relevant to today's healthcare needs, because everyone is affected if it is not that graduates come into contact with in the workplace. For example, it is absolutely critical that today's nurses are well-versed in how to use technology every day in the workplace.

"The new nursing curriculum emphasizes data access and management. Today's nursing students must know how to access, sort, manage, and apply data. Nurturing skills in data mining, using electronic resources to obtain data and evidence, using quality-improvement data focused on improving care delivery, and electronic medical-record technology integration have become a major educational focus" (Allen 2013). If a nurse is not confident in using electronic medical records or how to use the Internet to educate herself about cutting-edge treatments and procedures, everyone in the community will suffer not simply the nurse.

Allen, P. (2013). Preparing nurses for tomorrow's healthcare system. American Nurse Today. Retrieved from: http://www.americannursetoday.com/article.aspx?id=10304&fid=10226 Q3. Teaching conceptually requires a balance between the general (teaching concepts and teaching nurses to 'learn how to learn') and the specific (such as the use of case studies). Nurses must be able to reason inductively from the specific to the general and deductively from the general to the specific.

Of course, a pure case study approach is impossible, given that students must learn to reason deductively and apply general principles to their practice but it is also necessary to have such specific, hands-on opportunities so future nurses can see how their training transcends the purely theoretical. "The case study is a popular teaching strategy frequently used in academic settings. As an active learning strategy, the case study builds on learned material that encourages students to more fully understand the content being presented.

The most common type of case study is problem based, which requires learners to develop solutions to a given scenario" (Sprang 2010). Case studies, to be effective, must make use of complex and ambiguous situations that genuinely tax students' critical thinking capacities. They are not a replacement for effective nursing school education on general principles but they are still an important component of preparing students for future residencies and the workforce. References Sprang, S. (2010). Making the case using case studies for staff development. Journal for Nurses in Staff Development, 26 (20): E6-E10.

Retrieved from: http://www.nursingcenter.com/lnc/static?pageid=1071277 Q4. Technology has proven to be a great asset in improving healthcare delivery. It has also proven to be an asset in the education of new nurses, expanding the range of ways in which nurses can be exposed to the profession. As well as hands-on simulations with computers, large portions of nursing education.