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Background:

One of the most significant aspects of the preparation of nurses for practice in the 21st century is the clinical learning experience they have throughout their educational program. It is “in clinical” that theoretical learning is operationalized and applied and where faculty can determine what students actually do, not merely what they say they will do. With the increased use of high-tech simulators, the laboratory setting also has become a place where significant learning occurs and where students’ decision making and interventions can be observed. Despite the fact that the role of the nurse has changed dramatically in recent years, however, the way faculty go about designing and implementing clinical/laboratory experiences for students is largely unchanged from when we used an apprentice model of education.

Today, faculty are challenged to find appropriate and quality clinical settings in which students can learn, the length of time in those settings and the activities in which students are permitted to be engaged often are limited, the complexity of patients for whom students care has increased dramatically, and students report that their clinical experiences are not as effective as they could be. In addition, more schools of nursing use high-tech simulators that allow students to engage in sophisticated decision making in a controlled laboratory setting, yet the nature of subsequent clinical experiences has not necessarily changed to reflect the new skills that students bring.

Nursing faculty must find ways to make the clinical and laboratory learning experience more effective and meaningful for students, patients, and clinical agency staff. They must re-think our existing models of clinical/laboratory teaching and evaluation and design experiences that will most effectively prepare graduates to function in today’s chaotic, unpredictable, ambiguous, high-tech, team-oriented practice environments. And since many of today’s faculty have not been prepared for the faculty role, the National League for Nursing has a responsibility to guide them in achieving these goals.

Purpose of the Task Group:

The purpose of the Task Group is to encourage and promote excellence and innovation in nursing education’s approaches to clinical and laboratory teaching and the evaluation of learning in the clinical and laboratory settings.

Specific Tasks to be Completed:

1. Revise, renew and/or write a Position Statement on Clinical Nursing Education that encourages and promotes (a) the development and implementation of innovative teaching/learning models and (b) research about clinical learning.
2. Compile a comprehensive synthesis of the literature from nursing and other health professions fields that focuses on clinical/laboratory/simulation teaching and evaluation.
3. Disseminate information about factors that promote or inhibit the development and implementation of innovative clinical/laboratory teaching and evaluation strategies.

4. Add information about clinical and laboratory teaching and evaluation to the literature database in order to expand the repository of evidence on this topic

5. Develop and monitor an electronic “community” on the topic of clinical/laboratory teaching and evaluation.

Qualifications of Task Group Members:

• Active member of the NLN
• Experienced teacher in the clinical and laboratory settings
• Embraces innovative thinking and creative approaches to nursing education
• Good writing skills
• Access to literature and other resources related to clinical/laboratory teaching and evaluation
• Technological competence that allows full participation in monitoring an electronic “community” on innovation, searching relevant literature, contributing to the online database, and other activities

Suggested Number of Task Group Members: 6-8

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