Finding spirituality and nursing presence: the student's challenge.

The concepts of spirituality and nursing presence are difficult for nursing students to comprehend, identify, and apply. Yet holistic nursing practice obligates nurse educators to teach students about these abstract concepts. The purpose of this article is to describe a nursing faculty's approach to encourage baccalaureate students to explore and develop an understanding of the concepts of spirituality and nursing presence in light of their clinical practice.

A different kind of clinical experience: poverty up close and personal.

Nursing faculty are faced with the dilemma of how to teach the complex health and social issues about poverty to students because most nursing students have limited exposure to the impoverished. A seminar-driven clinical experience at a crisis center was implemented to address this challenge. Preclinical and postclinical exposure questions helped both students and faculty alike identify growth in students' awareness of social responsibility, client advocacy, and ethical issues.