High-fidelity simulation and emergency preparedness.

Ongoing threats of bioterrorism and the consequences of natural disasters require nurses entering the workforce to be competent in emergency preparedness. Nurses need to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams and use their critical thinking skills to provide safe nursing care during potentially chaotic public health emergencies. Using Institute of Medicine recommendations and Quality and Safety Education for Nurses competencies, the authors describe a public health emergency simulation exercise with undergraduate senior nursing students enrolled in a public health clinical course.

Congregational health ministries: a national study of pastors' views.

Objectives: Since the 1980s, there has been a growing, but little studied, movement that organizes church-based health services under the direction of a coordinator, usually a registered nurse. These Congregational Health Ministries (CHMs) emphasize health promotion and disease prevention. We compared the perceptions of pastors with and without organized CHMs and the characteristics of their congregations' health ministries.

Beyond the misapprehension of nursing rituals.

Topic: The power of nursing symbols and rituals to convey the values of contemporary professional nursing.

Purpose: To explore the power of symbols and rituals from the perspective of experts in ritual studies, and to demonstrate their significance for the practice of professional nursing.

Sources: Published literature.