Learn how a nurse educator and a teaching and learning librarian at Western Washington University created an innovative approach to teaching digital information literacy. In this podcast, Emily Spracklin and Christine Espina used professional fact-checker strategies, a reflection notebook, and an information literacy framework to develop student competency in information evaluation skills. Read their article for more details about how they teach students to sift credible information from a myriad of online sources and engage in patient-centered communication and education.

Interprofessional education (IPE) is important for health professions students, but advanced practice nursing students often lack opportunities to practice interprofessional care in ambulatory scenarios. A team of health professions educators designed an interprofessional simulation focused on the ambulatory care setting and implemented it with health science students at a large midwestern university. Family and psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner students, along with students from undergraduate nursing, medicine, pharmacy, audiology, dental hygiene, social work, and physical therapy, participated in the virtual interprofessional simulation. In this podcast, Dr. Lisa Rohrig describes the simulation, its development, and the outcomes. The authors provide more detail in their article.

Are you using video announcements in your online courses? If not, listen to this podcast with Dr. Darci McCall and read her article. Video announcements are an effective way to enhance connection and improve the learner’s experience in an online course. Unlike text-based communication, these humanize the instructor, bringing presence and authenticity to the virtual classroom. Incorporating video announcements into a course is a simple but valuable addition. By strengthening instructor presence and communication, this strategy transforms online learning, creating a supportive and engaging environment that enhances student satisfaction and success.

Learn how one prelicensure course in community and population health helps students develop empathy in marginalized populations and practice trauma-informed care with all patients. Dr. Jennifer Forbush describes a collaboration with local teachers to facilitate social and emotional learning in at-risk highschoolers. Find out more about her teaching strategy in her Nurse Educator article.

Feedback alone does not satisfy the need for structured debriefing, which is part of good simulation. In this podcast, Ashley McMath explains how she used Socratic questioning during debriefing to help students uncover their thinking behind their actions and foster an environment of open dialogue and reflection. Read more about the debriefing strategy in her article Nurse Educator.

In this podcast and article, Dr. Megan Jester describes an innovative learning activity in which  students share photographs (taken as part of class) that represent the mental health continuum. The activity begins with a faculty-led lecture introducing the mental health continuum. In groups, students walk around campus, taking photos of objects that reflect the continuum. Groups then create and share a PowerPoint slide featuring their selected object and write a social media statement. Dr. Jester explains how this activity can be adapted for other courses including those offered online.

Drs. Pamela Miller and Theresa Marcotte designed an in-class exercise to help students understand the differences between an article summary and a synthesis of information from several articles. Using a PICOT question, students perform a critical analysis of specific content in 3 journal articles. This activity is a competency-based strategy that could be employed in entry-level and graduate courses.

The transition from clinical practice to graduate studies can be daunting to some practicing nurses. It is well documented that graduate nursing students lack academic preparation for rigorous scholarly work. Drs. Kimberly Douglas and Edmund Pajarillo describe a national onboarding consortium of graduate nursing faculty that uses a model onboarding program to address graduate students’ academic preparedness. The program is easily adopted to support students from various backgrounds and regions within the United States. The onboarding program was evaluated initially in a pilot study, which became the foundation for the national program to be customizable. You can learn more about the program and national consortium in their article.

Did you know that 17% of individuals in the US live with substance use disorder (SUD)? Nursing curricula may not adequately address SUD, and stigma can impact patients’ care. Their project measured stigma toward people with SUD among prelicensure nursing students. Students with personal experience had lower stigma scores than those without this experience. In this podcast, Drs. Jennifer Crook and Sarah Febres-Cordero explain the importance of preparing students to care for patients with SUD and how to do this in the curriculum. Learn more about this project and strategies you can use in your own programs.

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This podcast with Drs. Leslie Lopez and Melissa Nunn presents a learner-led clinical simulation to improve communication-specific developmental screening skills of nurse practitioner students. The simulation prepares students to care diverse patients with an emphasis on the pediatric population.