Purposeful Simulation Role Assignment

The purpose of this study was to determine whether direct nursing care providers have decisional conflict about receiving influenza vaccinations and characteristics associated with decisional conflict. The researchers used a self-administered questionnaire mailed to direct nursing care providers in two long-term-care organizations. Most direct nursing care providers in both organizations (80% and 93%, respectively) intended to get the influenza vaccine. Unregulated direct nursing care providers had more decisional conflict than regulated providers, especially related to feeling uninformed about the pros and cons of influenza vaccination. Unclear valuing of the pros and cons of influenza vaccination was related to the age of the direct care providers in both organizations. Decisional conflict and influenza vaccination practices may be determined, in part, by age and by the culture of a health care organization. A decision aid to improve knowledge and clarify values may improve decision quality and increase influenza vaccination rates.

Effectiveness of e-STORY App in clinical reasoning competency and self-directed learning among students in associate nursing program: A quasi experimental study

Training direct care providers to care for individuals with dementia is challenging. Cultural differences, varying education levels, and high staff turnover further complicate consistent training. In our previous studies, direct care providers emphasized the need for training that is relevant, flexible and interactive. Our project aims to improve dementia care competencies through an innovative, flexible web-based platform that presents content in written and audio narration formats. We interviewed and tracked server data to identify preferences of 23 direct care providers (16 PCA, 7 ALC, 95.65% women, mean age 37.5) from personal care agencies (PCA) and assisted living communities (ALC) using training software an average of 1 hour per week for one month. Their use of audio versus written materials was tracked and analyzed to better understand learning preferences. All participants read the materials and 82% listened to the audio. We also captured the time windows of when the training was access to determine if integration of learning occurs within or outside of the work schedule. Highlights from the findings include 61% of participants accessed the training during traditional work hours, while 39% engaged the training outside of a traditional work schedule. This finding speaks to the challenges of integrating learning opportunities into the traditional work schedule. Direct care providers have diverse educational background, experience, and time constraints. To best meet their needs, content should be brief and presented in multiple formats for trainees to select as they believe will best fit their needs.

In a student-centered teaching and learning environment, students' needs, potentials, and learning styles are considered crucial. Therefore, teachers need to understand what learning styles students prefer to teach effectively. In the current study, a quantitative research approach has been adopted in this study within it descriptive research designed was used. To determine the preferred learning styles of B.Ed. students, VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic) learning style model has been used. Since the data was collected using the VARK questionnaire, simple random sampling techniques were used. The reliability of the instrument was calculated through Cronbach α= 0.75. The sample of the study consists of 140 Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) students of a Public Sector University located in Northern Sindh, Pakistan. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics (percentages mean and standard deviation) to determine the most preferred style of learning of students. The results of the study revealed that 27.93% of the B.Ed. students have preferred aural learning style, 25.13% kinaesthetic learning style, 22.65% visual style of learning and 21.09% preferred read/write learning style respectively. To conclude that the majority of the B.Ed. students preferred aural learning style and the least preferred style of learning was read/write. Hence, B.Ed. students were driven towards an aural learning style. This study suggests that students learning styles are influenced by the teacher’s teaching style. Therefore, the teacher can determine his/her teaching style by using the score of the VARK questionnaire. The study recommends that another study can be conducted by the teachers to learn about the larger number of students’ preferred learning styles. The teacher can also address a mixture of learning styles. In the classroom, there are always diverse learners. In that case, the teacher can use integrated teaching style which can address all learners preferred teaching style.

INTRODUCTION: Learning styles refer to the ways an individual processes and retain new information and skills. Knowledge about preferred learning styles can assist in developing effective pedagogies and enhance classroom–learning experiences. Optimal learning environments consider how students learn and utilize various teaching methods for curriculum delivery to match specified student learning preferences. METHODS: This cross-sectional study presents the findings of the preferred learning style of 97 physiotherapy students studying in JSS College of Physiotherapy, Mysuru, using a self-administered questionnaire developed by Victoria Chislett and Alan Chapman, 2005. Data were collected using the survey method through Google Forms. RESULTS: We found equal distribution of unimodal and multimodal learning style. Among the unimodal style of learning, 20.6% of participants had predominantly auditory learning style. 15.46% of participants had predominantly visual learning style. 10.3% of participants had predominantly kinesthetic learning style. In multimodal style of learning, 21.6% of participants had predominantly visual and auditory learning styles. 15.46% of participants had predominantly visual and kinesthetic learning style. 12.37% of participants had predominantly auditory and kinesthetic learning style and only 1% of participants had visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning style. CONCLUSION: The most preferred unimodal learning style among physiotherapy students was auditory followed by visual and kinesthetic. The most preferred multimodal style of learning was visual and auditory, followed by visual and kinesthetic.

Clinical reasoning, a key component of knowledge development for new nurses, is a practice-based, situated form of reasoning that requires general case knowledge, basic scientific and evidence-based knowledge of patient care. Within Benner’s Novice to Expert framework, a quasi-experimental study with a matched pairs, pre-and post-test design, was conducted using a commercially available web-based instrument validated for measuring clinical reasoning in health care providers (Insight Assessment’s Health Science Reasoning Test-Numeracy). The study evaluated the nurse resident’s clinical reasoning skills in an established academic medical center’s nurse residency program. This followed the pilot of a four-session resident facilitation model using Socratic questioning, case studies, peer-discussion and self-reflection compared with the standard lecture model. No statistical significance between the intervention and control cohort was found on the overall clinical reasoning score (t=-.661 df (43), p=0.512> 0.05). However a statistically significant difference was noted on the sublevel category of explanation for the control group which could not be explained by this project (t=-2.043, df (43), p=0.047<0.05). This suggests the need for further studies to better understand the expected levels of clinical reasoning and impact of education delivery models within a nurse residency program curriculum.

“From the classroom to Dr. YouTube”: nursing students' experiences of learning and teaching styles in Jordan

Oral diseases are very prevalent across the lifespan and impact overall health, yet are largely preventable. The Smiles for Life (SFL) curriculum was created to educate healthcare providers about oral disease and support integration of oral health and primary care. This study examines SFL's influence on clinical practice and education. Surveys were sent to registered users of SFL. Users who self-identified as direct care providers (DCPs), or educators, were included in the analysis. Survey response rate was 18 percent, with 87 percent identifying as DCPs and 13 percent as educators. Across professions, 85 percent of DCPs reported SFL influencing their practice to some degree, with variance among profession type and experience. DCPs most commonly reported that SFL led them to improve how they conduct oral health activities, with 60 percent performing the activity more skillfully following completion of SFL. Fluoride varnish application was the most common practice behavior initiated, and caries risk assessments was the oral health activity affected to the greatest degree. A majority of educators (94 percent) reported that SFL led them to incorporate or enhance oral health in their teaching. SFL helped educators emphasize the importance of oral health, improved their ability to teach content, raised motivation, and reduced barriers to teaching oral health. Data supports that SFL is positively influencing oral health practice across professions, especially in areas of caries risk assessment and fluoride varnish application. SFL improves the frequency and quality with which DCPs and educators participate in oral health activities, and facilitates oral health inclusion in primary care.

The problem of this study was to determine whether learning styles of students affect their math achievement scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills Test. The research questions addressed relevant to this study were: 1. Is there a positive correlation between students' learning styles and their achievement test scores in mathematics? 2. Is there a positive correlation between specific sub group's (as deemed by the state of Texas) and gender's learning styles and their achievement test scores in mathematics? The Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient and the Point-biserial correlation analysis was applied to the data collected from 500 fifth grade students attending a North Texas Intermediate school. The significance level was established at the .05 level. Part of the data was the student's responses to the Learning Style Inventory by Dunn, Dunn and Price. The findings established that the learning style preferences of all students in the area of persistence significantly impacted their math achievement scores. Gender and ethnicity were mitigating factors in the findings. These learning style preferences significantly impacted achievement in the following ways: * Caucasian students' preference of a high level of persistence in completing a difficult task. * Hispanic students' preference for a warm learning environment and motivational factor of pleasing the teacher. * Afro-American students' preference for kinesthetic learning. * Female students' learning style preferences appear in: - the design of the learning environment - the need for intake of food and/or drink - a high level of responsibility - a high sense of self-motivation , of teacher and of parent motivation. * Male students' learning style preferences appear in: - a warm learning environment - a high level of responsibility - the need for intake of food and/or drink - a high sense of teacher and of parent motivation - a late morning learning In summary, the author suggests that supplying the teachers with information concerning students' learning style preferences will benefit student achievement.

Clinical reasoning is essential for nurses and nursing students to recognize and intervene when hospitalized patients present acute heart failure. Serious games are digital educational interventions that could foster the development of clinical reasoning through an engaging and intrinsically motivating learning experience. However, elements from a playful approach (eg, rewards, narrative elements) are often absent or poorly integrated in existing serious games, which may limit their contribution to learning. Thus, we developed and studied the contribution of a novel serious game on nursing students' engagement, intrinsic motivation, and clinical reasoning in the context of acute heart failure. We adopted a multimethod design and randomized 28 participants to receive two serious game prototypes in a different sequence, one that fully integrated elements of a playful approach (SIGN@L-A) and one that offered only objectives, feedback, and a functional aesthetic (SIGN@L-B). Through self-reported questionnaires, participants reported higher levels of engagement and intrinsic motivation after using SIGN@L-A. However, negligible differences in clinical reasoning scores were found after using each serious game prototype. During interviews, participants reported on the contribution of design elements to their learning. Quantitative findings should be replicated in larger samples. Qualitative findings may guide the development of future serious games.

Research shows that both learning style preference and strategy use are important factors affecting second/foreign language (SL/FL) learning, and that both may vary, as learners are different. Yet, studies on learning style preferences and their interaction with strategy in relation to SL/FL learning outcomes are limited. The present study thus examined Chinese undergraduate EFL (English as a FL) students’ preferences for learning styles, use of learning strategies and their predictive effects on their English achievements. Analyses of 439 questionnaires revealed the following major findings: (1) the whole sample, regardless of gender, displayed no major preference for any learning style and generally preferred the kinesthetic style the most, followed by tactile, auditory, visual, group and individual styles respectively; (2) the whole sample, regardless of gender, demonstrated a medium to high level of use of the six types of learning strategies, and used metacognitive strategies the most frequently, followed by cognitive, social, compensation, memory and affective strategies, respectively; (3) cognitive strategy use significantly positively predicted all samples’ English achievements, additionally, memory strategy use and the tactile style significantly predicted female students’ English achievements, and (4) no significant difference was observed between genders in learning styles or strategy use except for group learning. These findings further pinpoint the importance of learning styles and strategy use in second/foreign language learning, which thus deserve continuous research.

BackgroundIn the field of health care, knowledge and clinical reasoning are key with regard to quality and confidence in decision making. The development of knowledge and clinical reasoning is influenced not only by students’ intrinsic factors but also by extrinsic factors such as satisfaction with taught content, pedagogic resources and pedagogic methods, and the nature of the objectives and challenges proposed.Nowadays, professors play the role of learning facilitators rather than simple “lecturers” and face students as active learners who are capable of attributing individual meanings to their personal goals, challenges, and experiences to build their own knowledge over time.Innovations in health simulation technologies have led to clinical virtual simulation. Clinical virtual simulation is the recreation of reality depicted on a computer screen and involves real people operating simulated systems. It is a type of simulation that places people in a central role through their exercising of motor control skills, decision skills, and communication skills using virtual patients in a variety of clinical settings.Clinical virtual simulation can provide a pedagogical strategy and can act as a facilitator of knowledge retention, clinical reasoning, improved satisfaction with learning, and finally, improved self-efficacy.However, little is known about its effectiveness with regard to satisfaction, self-efficacy, knowledge retention, and clinical reasoning.ObjectiveThis study aimed to evaluate the effect of clinical virtual simulation with regard to knowledge retention, clinical reasoning, self-efficacy, and satisfaction with the learning experience among nursing students.MethodsA randomized controlled trial with a pretest and 2 posttests was carried out with Portuguese nursing students (N=42). The participants, split into 2 groups, had a lesson with the same objectives and timing. The experimental group (n=21) used a case-based learning approach, with clinical virtual simulator as a resource, whereas the control group (n=21) used the same case-based learning approach, with recourse to a low-fidelity simulator and a realistic environment. The classes were conducted by the usual course lecturers.We assessed knowledge and clinical reasoning before the intervention, after the intervention, and 2 months later, with a true or false and multiple-choice knowledge test. The students’ levels of learning satisfaction and self-efficacy were assessed with a Likert scale after the intervention.ResultsThe experimental group made more significant improvements in knowledge after the intervention (P=.001; d=1.13) and 2 months later (P=.02; d=0.75), and it also showed higher levels of learning satisfaction (P<.001; d=1.33). We did not find statistical differences in self-efficacy perceptions (P=.9; d=0.054).ConclusionsThe introduction of clinical virtual simulation in nursing education has the potential to improve knowledge retention and clinical reasoning in an initial stage and over time, and it increases the satisfaction with the learning experience among nursing students.

PurposeGraduating medical students need broad clinical diagnostic reasoning skills that integrate learning across clinical specialties to deal with undifferentiated patient problems. The opportunity to acquire these skills may be limited during clinical placements on increasingly specialized hospital wards. We developed an intervention of regular general practitioner (GP) facilitated teaching in hospital placements to enable students to develop broad clinical diagnostic reasoning. The intervention was piloted, refined and delivered to a whole cohort of medical students at the start of their third year. This paper examines whether students perceived opportunities to improve their broad diagnostic clinical reasoning through our intervention.MethodsGP-facilitated teaching sessions were delivered weekly in hospital placements to small groups of 6–8 students for 90 mins over 6 weeks. Students practiced clinical reasoning with real patient cases that they encountered on their placements. Evaluation of learning outcomes was conducted through a student questionnaire using Likert scales with free-text boxes for additional explanation. Focus groups were conducted to gain a more in-depth understanding of student perspectives.ResultsAs high as 87% of students agreed that their broad clinical diagnostic reasoning ability had improved. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed four factors supporting this improvement: practicing the hypothetico-deductive method, using real patient cases, composing student groups from different speciality placements and the breadth of the facilitators’ knowledge. Students additionally reported enhanced person-centredness in terms of understanding the patient’s perspective and journey. Students perceived that the added value of general practitioner facilitators lay in their broad knowledge base and knowledge of patient needs in the community.ConclusionOur results suggest that medical students can develop broad clinical diagnostic reasoning skills in hospital settings through regular GP-facilitated teaching. Our approach has the advantage of working within the established curricular format of hospital placements and being deliverable at scale to whole student cohorts.

The improvement of clinical reasoning in nursing students is a benchmark for students' abilities in carrying out nursing care. Disease script-based learning can help students recognize the information. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of illness scripts on the clinical reasoning ability of nursing students. The research design used was a quasi-experimental approach with a non-equivalent approach with a control group. The sampling technique used consecutive techniques. The number of samples in each group is 35 respondents, data collection using Clinical Reasoning Assessment Tools. Data analysis using Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. The results of this study indicate that there is an increase in the clinical reasoning ability of nursing students in the experimental group from the average value of 40.6 to 50.3. Most of the respondents in the experimental group had clinical reasoning at the intermediate learner level. The results of the Wilcoxon test showed that the Z-count value in the experimental group was 5.092 with a p-value = &lt;0.001. It can be concluded that there is an effect of illness scripts method on the clinical reasoning ability of nursing students.

This study investigates the link between writing tasks, learners’ learning style preference, and writing strategy use. It also investigates if students with various proficiency levels stem from different learning style preference and use different writing strategies. This research attempts to answer the following research questions: what are the most common learning style preferences of Saudi undergraduate students majoring in English? what are the most common writing strategies used by Saudi students when writing an essay? Is the choice of writing strategy related to a learner’s learning style preference and writing task, and how might they be linked with one another? And finally does the use of writing strategies contribute to students’ writing performance? The sample of the study consisted of 74 Saudi female undergraduate students in their final year of their bachelor degree in King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. Two questionnaires were used: (a) the Perceptual Learning Style Preference by Reid (1987), and (b) a writing strategy questionnaire by Petri and Czárl (2003). Moreover, students were asked to choose one of the two TOEFL writing prompts to write an essay. The data received from the returned questionnaires and writing tests were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS19. Results indicated that Saudi female students were mostly auditory and group learners. As for the writing strategies, Saudi learners used more “before writing” strategies than “during writing” strategies and “reviewing writing” strategies. Results revealed that there was no correlation between the participants’ learning style preference and writing strategies, nor their use of writing strategies and their writing proficiency. As a whole, this study contributed to the ESL/EFL field by providing information on Saudi undergraduate female learners in terms of their preferred perceptual learning style, their level of writing proficiency, and indeed their use of writing strategies.