Patient safety competencies in rural ASN students: An evidence-based curricular innovation

Abstract

<p>Hospital clinical experiences are important events in prelicensure nursing education.&nbsp;Benefits include the opportunity for students to experience actual nursing&nbsp;responsibilities, immersion into environment, and professional socialization. However,&nbsp;challenges in finding appropriate clinical experiences include competition over clinical&nbsp;sites, decreasing patient acuity, and high student-faculty ratios. Rural schools of nursing&nbsp;have these challenges and those inherent in rural environments such as limited health<br />care access, restricted critical access hospitals, and limited resources. The purpose of&nbsp;this evidence-based practice project was to plan, implement, and evaluate the use of a&nbsp;series of patient care simulations as an educational intervention to improve patient safety competencies while caring for multiple patients in prelicensure students at a&nbsp;remote rural two-year college in the Midwest. The project aimed to answer the PICOT&nbsp;question: In rural ASN prelicensure students, what is the effect of a series of multiple&nbsp;patient simulations as compared to baseline on patient safety competency? The&nbsp;Promoting Action on Research in Health Sciences (PARiHS) framework was used to&nbsp;guide project implementation and evaluation and the Nursing Education Simulation Framework (NESF) was used to guide the simulations. Participants were observed and&nbsp;the data statistically analyzed. There was a decrease in safety errors in observed<br />competencies from 25 errors in 100 behaviors in the first to 12 errors in 100 behaviors&nbsp;in the fourth simulation. Findings support the use of a series of multiple patient&nbsp;simulations in prelicensure nursing education to improve patient safety competency.<br />Incorporating this educational intervention into rural nursing curricula is recommended.&nbsp;</p>