Assistant Professors Tammie Sherner and Tracee Chapman recently won the People’s Choice Award for their poster presentation at the annual International Nursing Association of Clinical and Simulation Learning conference.
This was their first time presenting at the conference. Their poster outlined an experiential learning assignment developed as a way for students to practice teaching patients about their medications when discharged.
“Our goals are to normalize talking about mental health issues and medications and to incorporate families into a plan of care whenever possible,” Chapman said. “Experiential learning in the classroom is one way to bridge clinical practice gaps. We wanted to allow the students time to practice patient discharge teaching since they rarely get to discharge patients in their clinical rotations. We want them to develop confidence in their patient teaching skills.”
The assignment incorporates simulated behavioral health patients from the Patient Voices Project. Students create educational infographics about a medication relevant to a patient profile, then they practice teaching one another about it in a role play skit. Finally, each student completes a personal reflection on the activity and peer reviews one of the class’ skits, learning how to provide constructive feedback.
“The students enjoy active learning, and we highly value collaboration in our classroom,” Chapman said. Based on student survey feedback, students “think the assignment is a valuable exercise, they have fun, and they learn from one another,” Chapman said.
Professor Kelley Connor, the director of simulation-based education and research, and Associate Professor Paula Molina-Shaver also represented Boise State at the conference. Molina-Shaver and Chapman gave a podium presentation on the multi-patient behavioral health simulation.