Transforming learning: Applying community and systems level interventions through a poster project.

Background: Public health nursing practice is population-focused with a goal of improving health outcomes. Nurse educators are challenged to identify teaching-learning strategies to transform students' perspectives and knowledge of public health concepts.

Purpose: The purpose of the poster project was to evaluate students' ability to meet Quad Council Coalition Competency Review Task Force competencies for public health nursing.

Methods: Teams of students identified an issue, investigated epidemiological data, searched literature, linked the issue to a Healthy People 2020 objective, defined the societal health construct, identified evidence-based interdisciplinary actions, and drew a conclusion based on the synthesis of evidence. The Quad Council Public Health Nursing domains and competencies provided a crosswalk design for faculty to evaluate teams' ability to plan and implement population-focused actions within the poster project.

Results: Teams met one or more competencies in six out of eight domains. Domains I-IV, VI, and VIII were met by 100%, domain V was met by 60%, and domain VII was met by 25% of the teams.

Discussion: Ownership of the poster translated into teams demonstrating creative approaches and expertise in identifying actions to address societal health outcomes.

Conclusion: The societal health construct poster is an effective pedagogical approach that encourages teams to become change agents at the community and systems level.