Nursing Lesson Plan: PDAs and Electronic Patient Records

Overview and Context

This lesson plan is designed for implementation in a classroom setting with nursing students attending a graduate-level nursing course. The classroom does not necessarily have to be a physical space; the plan can equally be taught in a clinical environment. It can also be adapted for small groups or large classroom sizes. For this particular plan, the target audience is a large classroom of at least 20 graduate nursing students between the ages of 21 and 43 years old. The lesson topic involves both motor skills and technology, specifically the cognitive recognition of the capabilities of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) when used to create, modify, maintain, and transmit an Electronic Patient Record (EPR).

Learning Objectives

There are several distinct learning objectives that this lesson plan seeks to meet: an educational learning objective, an instructional learning objective, and a behavioral learning objective. One recent study determined that "how physicians are evaluated throughout their careers and how training programs are accredited has shifted from demonstrating what we teach and what we are learning to demonstrating the achievement of competence" (Hauer & Quill, 2011, p. 503). This finding acknowledges that educational objectives are no longer simply tied to the subject being taught or learned; a demonstrated display of competence is now necessary to determine whether the educational objective has been reached.

With this in mind, the educational objective for this lesson plan is to determine whether students are competent in entering patient data into a PDA in order to create, modify, change, and transmit an EPR.

The instructional objective is to provide the necessary activities and resources to students so they can gain the knowledge required to demonstrate competence with the PDA, specifically regarding the EPR. These instructional objectives will be implemented through Bloom's Taxonomy, which consists of tools that assist students in developing cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills. In more straightforward terms, "the learners should have acquired new skills, knowledge, and/or attitudes" (Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning, 2010) after an instructional event. Most experts believe that instructional objectives need to be defined as "the first step to enhance learning" (Sharma, Sastri, & Ahluwalia, 2010, p. 171). For this lesson, the new skill gained through the instructional event is the psychomotor skill of physically entering information into the PDA, and the new knowledge gained is how to create and transmit that information to the necessary medical professionals.

Finally, the behavioral learning objective is that each student will be able to walk through the entire process of entering or changing information in the PDA to create or modify a new or existing EPR. As one expert wrote, "The learner's changed behavior is evaluated after the completion of the session to demonstrate that learning took place" (Wittmann-Price & Fasolka, 2010, p. 233). It is projected that all students should be capable of achieving all three learning objectives.

Learner Types

Any effective lesson plan must consider the range of learning styles present among students. The three most common learning styles are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic.

An auditory learner prefers to listen carefully and can usually acquire knowledge by reading aloud—either to themselves or to others. When bored, they tend to talk to others and are skilled at retaining information through self-verbalization.

A visual learner typically takes detailed notes and prefers to sit near the front of a classroom in order to observe what is taking place. They often visualize assignments by closing their eyes, which they also use as a recall strategy. They learn well through illustrations and color-rich presentations and frequently use descriptive language both verbally and in written form.

A kinesthetic learner prefers a hands-on approach. These students speak with their hands, find reasons to move around when bored, and enjoy activities such as cooking, construction, engineering, and art. They tend to sit near doors or open spaces and are uncomfortable in traditional classrooms that offer no hands-on experiences. They need to remain active and benefit from frequent breaks. Most individuals have one dominant learning style, but nearly all students can draw on all three styles to varying degrees.

References

Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning (2010). Retrieved December 9, 2011, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

Hauer, J., & Quill, T. (2011). Educational needs assessment, development of learning objectives, and choosing a teaching approach. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 14(4), 503–508.

Sharma, S., Sastri, O., & Ahluwalia, P. K. (2010). Design of instructional objectives of undergraduate solid state physics course: A first step to physics education research. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1263(1), 171–174.

Tschannen, D., & Kalisch, B. J. (2009). The impact of nurse/physician collaboration on patient length of stay. Journal of Nursing Management, 17(7), 796–803.

Wittmann-Price, R. A., & Fasolka, B. J. (2010). Objectives and outcomes: The fundamental difference. Nursing Education Perspectives, 31(4), 233–236.