Transforming nursing curricula for a global community.

With nurses and midwives providing the majority of health care globally, nursing education in all countries must prepare students for broader responsibilities to move the agenda forward for equitable care and universal health coverage. Columbia University School of Nursing developed and implemented a vibrant approach to curriculum transformation that included a new didactic course followed by a program of global clinical experiences to expand students' learning environments in global health. Program planning included defining learning objectives, mobilizing support within the school, establishing new sites, recruiting and preparing students, overseeing of students with host institutions, and evaluating the program.

Web-based hazard and near-miss reporting as part of a patient safety curriculum.

As part of a patient safety curriculum, we developed a Web-based hazard and near-miss reporting system for postbaccalaureate nursing students to use during their clinical experiences in the first year of their combined BS-MS advanced practice nurse program. The 25-week clinical rotations included 2 days per week for 5 weeks each in community, medical-surgical, obstetrics, pediatrics, and psychiatric settings. During a 3-year period, 453 students made 21,276 reports.

Development of a self-report instrument to measure patient safety attitudes, skills, and knowledge.

Purpose: To describe the development and psychometric testing of the Patient Safety Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge Scale (PS-ASK).

Methods: Content validity of a 35-item instrument was established by a panel of experts. The instrument was pilot tested on 285 nursing students.

Near-miss and hazard reporting: promoting mindfulness in patient safety education.

Patient safety efforts advocate for transforming healthcare from a culture of blame to a non-punitive "culture of safety." One of the most challenging hurdles is to encourage healthcare practitioners to be mindful about their activities. To promote mindfulness during clinical education for entry-level nurses, we developed a web-based dangerous situation and near miss reporting system for a cohort of baccalaureate nursing students (N=156).

Nursing home staff's perceived ability to influence quality of life.

Nurses, certified nursing assistants, activity personnel, social workers, and physicians in 5 cities rated their ability to affect each of 17 quality of life (QoL) items for 2 hypothetical cases. Those closest to the residents feel the most empowered to make a difference. Overall, certified nursing assistants were consistently the most optimistic about their ability to influence QoL.

Rating the importance of nursing home residents' quality of life.

Objectives: To assess how various stakeholders involved with nursing home care rate the importance of various quality-of-life (QoL) items for hypothetical residents with varying types of impairment.

Design: A community-based exploratory description of a convenience sample.

Setting: Eleven nursing homes in Florida, New Jersey, and Minnesota.

Effect of an informatics for evidence-based practice curriculum on nursing informatics competencies.

Effective and appropriate use of information and communication technologies is an essential competency for all health care professionals. The purpose of this paper is to describe the effect of an evolving informatics for evidence-based practice (IEBP) curriculum on nursing informatics competencies in three student cohorts in the combined BS/MS program for non-nurses at the Columbia University School of Nursing. A repeated-measures, non-equivalent comparison group design was used to determine differences in self-rated informatics competencies pre- and post-IEBP and between cohorts at the end of the BS year of the combined BS/MS program.

Cognitive impairment and quality-of-life: views of providers of long-term care services.

Quality-of-life (QoL) is now recognized as a principal outcome marker for long-term care. However, QoL is difficult to define and measure, especially in residents with dementia. Providers of long-term care services (n = 182) were asked to rate the importance of 19 psychosocial quality-of-life elements for hypothetical residents with physical impairment and for residents with cognitive impairment.

Promoting patient safety through informatics-based nursing education.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Quality of Health Care in America identified the critical role of information technology in designing safe and effective health care. In addition to technical aspects such as regional or national health information infrastructures, to achieve this goal, healthcare professionals must receive the requisite training during basic and advanced educational programs. In this article, we describe a two-pronged strategy to promote patient safety through an informatics-based approach to nursing education at the Columbia University School of Nursing: (1) use of a personal digital assistant (PDA) to document clinical encounters and to retrieve patient safety-related information at the point of care, and (2) enhancement of informatics competencies of students and faculty.