Student-Led Interest Groups: An Adjunct to Learner-Centered Nursing Education.

The current emphasis to make nurses full partners in health care dialogue, education, research, practice, and policy-making has made nursing education more challenging and exciting. Competing themes in an already saturated curriculum allow little room for adding more content to formal teaching-learning activities. Well-organized student-led interest groups are an excellent avenue for conducting focused extracurricular offerings that allow students to exercise their leadership and organizational skills, advocate for academic excellence, and add specialty topics missing in the generalist curriculum. As an adjunct to the formal curriculum, professional development events organized by student-led interest groups promote student engagement, lifelong learning, and learner-centered education.