M3: Blog Post 3- Leveraging Tools, Texts, and Talk in My Teaching Context
After reading and reviewing this week’s
course material, I recognize that in order to support practices beyond digital screens,
this requires the creation of learning experiences that encourage students to
connect digital interactions with real-world applications. In the spring 2025
semester, I needed to create a capstone nursing project that focused on direct
patient care that was specific to nursing education in the professional role. I
decided to focus my project on enhancing the current workflow on providing individualized
patient education on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)- but also with
the pursuit to involve senior nursing students as well as drive down hospital
readmission rates of acute exacerbations of COPD. Meaning that, patients would
be provided education that was individualized and focused on proper long-term management
of COPD to better patient outcomes and enhance nursing student’s confidence in
providing this education. Because COPD is a progressive illness, there are
times when patients have acute episodes in which they struggle to breathe. With
proper long-term management, these acute episodes can be prevented and lessened
when effective patient education is provided. Especially, when patients know
what their medications are for, why they are taking them, and what gaps in
their care may be lacking! With this in mind, I created a COPD resource tool
that allowed senior nursing students to customize the tool to make it specific
to each of their COPD patients. The resource tool was designed with a dual
purpose to increase student knowledge about COPD and then be handed to the
patient for their own use. I also created a student self-confidence scale that
students filled out before and after their teaching experiences with the
resource tool to evaluate its effectiveness. See data and resource tool below! 😊
In the context of the COPD education
tool, this meant guiding nursing students to move beyond passive use of
technology and instead engage with it as a means to support individualized
patient care. By incorporating affinity space principles, the design fostered
collaboration and encouraged students to draw from their own experiences and
knowledge while tailoring education to specific patient needs (Magnifico et
al., 2018). Facilitating meaningful discussions around these practices involved
a reflection strategy, where students shared how they adapted education
strategies based on digital findings and their real-life/real-time clinical patients.
It was essential to emphasize not only how to locate information, but how to
evaluate its relevance to the patient’s care (no, we don’t care about the
patient’s stool softener medication for constipation when we are talking to
them about COPD- lol!) and apply it with empathy and clarity. As with assessing
news literacy, purposeful digital navigation requires awareness of source
credibility, bias, and the broader impact of information use (Jacobson, 2017).
Equity concerns were central in the design process, in which students were
prompted to consider patients’ literacy levels, access to resources, language
barriers, and cultural backgrounds. Ensuring that the tool supported flexible,
inclusive approaches helped promote engagement and empowered students to
deliver education that truly met patients where they are, identified what they
did not know or understand about their illness and how to properly manage it.
These senior nursing students are preparing
to enter the workforce in which they will be expected to provide this type of patient
education- routinely on a medical-surgical floor. Use of a custom-designed COPD
education resource tool enhanced their ability to deliver individualized
patient teaching and increased their confidence and effectiveness in doing so.
As part of the tool’s implementation, the student self-confidence numerical
scale encompassed multiple questions related to COPD topics, including symptom
management, medication education, and lifestyle modification. The tool was
designed to foster deeper engagement with patient-specific information and how it
can be applied to improve patient outcomes. Much like the learning processes
found in affinity spaces, the resource allowed students to work interactively
and contextually, tailoring their teaching to each unique clinical scenario
rather than following a rigid script or worse, a boiler-plate discharge
information sheet about COPD provided already by the hospital (Magnifico et
al., 2018). It ultimately created an environment where students were encouraged
to reflect, adapt, and problem-solve using both new literacies and nondigital skills
(Magnifico et al., 2018). As a nurse, this is essential in connecting theoretical
knowledge from the classroom into effective patient education in the clinical
setting.
Students had to engage with digital
platforms such as the electronic health record and their Nursing Central app to
gather comprehensive patient data, including medication lists, immunization
records, and outpatient referrals. This critical use of digital tools mirrored
the type of critical thinking highlighted in modern news literacy, where
discerning credibility, identifying informational gaps, and applying relevant
knowledge are essential components of informed decision-making (Jacobson,
2017). By connecting digital literacy to clinical literacy, students developed
the ability to provide care using a patient-centered approach.
This project was so much work- but so
worth it to see the growth in these nursing students and the “aha- that’s what
that med is for” patient moments! I’ve used this resource tool on my hospital floor
ever since with both nursing students (sometimes from other colleges when I am
working there) and newly graduated nurses.
References
Jacobson,
L. (2017). Assessing news literacy in the 21st century. Literacy Today, 35(3),
18-22. https://sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Ftrade-journals%2Fassessing-news-literacy-21st-century%2Fdocview%2F1966007432%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8067
Magnifico,
A. M., Lammers, J. C., & Fields, D. A. (2018). Affinity spaces, literacies,
and classrooms: Tensions and opportunities. Journal of Adolescent &
Adult Literacy, 62(2), 137-146. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.865
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