Developing a Cultural Immersion Service-Learning Experience for Undergraduate Nursing Students.

Background: Cultural consciousness is a central element of purposeful and appropriate health care delivery. Research suggests that cultural consciousness is strengthened through self-reflection, dialogue about race, and experience within other cultures.

Method: Two cohorts of senior-level nursing students participated in a 1-week cultural immersion service-learning (CISL) experience in an isolated, rural American Indian community.

Engaging Nursing Students in a Rural Native American Community to Facilitate Cultural Consciousness.

Integrating cultural consciousness into nursing curricula is important for preparing a global nursing workforce. This article evaluated the impact of a teaching strategy designed to facilitate nursing students' cultural consciousness beyond the classroom during a 1-week field experience within a rurally isolated Native American community. Cultural consciousness health care is a central element of health care delivery that integrates clinical knowledge, sensitivity, and cultural understanding.

Forging partnerships between rural women with chronic conditions and their health care providers.

Successful adaptation to chronic illness is enhanced by active client-health care provider partnerships. The purposes of this article are to (a) examine the health care partnership needs of western rural women with chronic illness who participated in a computer-based support and education project, (b) describe how the role of the women in the partnership can be maximized by the use of a personal health record and improving health literacy, and (c) discuss ways health care providers can enhance their role in the partnership by careful listening and creating environments conducive to forging productive client-provider partnerships.

Underserved patients' choice of kiosk-based preventive health information.

Background And Objectives: Compliance with health promotion recommendations falls short of expectations nearly every time it is studied. Some of the most successful programs, however, focus on the patient and incorporate computers.

Methods: Interactive kiosks in waiting rooms of clinics for the medically underserved were used to educate patients about alcohol consumption, exercise, smoking cessation, and weight control.

Development of My Health Companion to enhance self-care management of chronic health conditions in rural dwellers.

Appropriate self-management support is needed to help individuals and their families meet the challenges of living with chronic health conditions. Such support is characterized by productive interactions between informed, active individuals, and their health care providers. The purposes of this paper are to describe the challenges to achieving self-management support and a tool, My Health Companion (MHC), which was developed to meet that challenge.

The pediatric nurse practitioner's role in reducing oral health disparities in homeless children.

Dental caries is the most common infectious disease of children. The majority of children in the United States who experience dental decay are from low-income, minority families. Many low- income, minority families are at risk for homelessness and, indeed, mothers with children are the fastest growing homeless group.

Nurse managed center: access to primary health care for urban Native Americans.

Urban Native Americans represent a small, diverse minority with unique health needs. The purposes of this descriptive retrospective study were to describe (a) the characteristics and primary health problems of urban Native Americans who receive primary health care at an urban nurse managed center (NMC) and (b) the nursing interventions provided at an urban NMC to urban Native Americans. A sample of 334 participants patient data were abstracted from a computerized clinical data set and coded based on the Omaha Classification System.

Self-esteem: a hidden concern in oral health.

Little is known about the impact of oral health on self-esteem. The purpose of this descriptive study was to identify the frequency of low self-esteem in vulnerable persons who received oral health care at an academic nursing center. Participants (N = 86) completed the Index of Self-Esteem (Hudson, 1982b), answered open-ended questions concerning oral health care practices, and participated in an oral health examination.

Nursing care delivered at academic community-based nurse-managed center.

The academic community-based nurse-managed center (CNC) in this study represents an innovative "nontraditional" model of primary healthcare that seeks to improve access for vulnerable uninsured urban populations. This article describes the nature of the services delivered by an academic CNC, the users of these services, and interventions provided by nurses in the CNC.