Where is the evidence for teaching methods used in nursing education?

Twenty-first century maternal-child faculty members are now being encouraged to base their teaching practice on sound evidence. Finding that evidence, however, can be challenging. This article discusses not only the current state of research on teaching in nursing, but also how and where educators can access information about teaching that is based on research. It also describes strategies educators can use to develop an evidence-based approach to teaching. Topics included in this discussion include recommended literature resources in nursing and education, bibliographic database search techniques, guides for appraisal of quantitative and qualitative research, and relevant nursing education and general education professional organizations. In addition, an evidence hierarchy from the field of education is introduced to rank educational studies in nursing. If nurse educators are to apply the evidence-based process used in clinical practice to the practice of nursing education, more research is needed in this field.     

Simulated practice--a panacea for health education?

A variety of approaches to teaching and learning are required to encompass the complexity of nursing. Simulated practice involves computer-based simulated environments, human patient simulation and role play, enabling multiple learning objectives to be taught in a realistic clinical environment without harming patients. The Nursing and Midwifery Council recognizes the use of simulated practice and has enabled higher education pre-registration nurse programme providers to incorporate a maximum of 300 hours of simulated practice as part of the 2300-hour practice hours component. However, not all students respond positively to simulated activity, which should be used to augment clinical practice and not replace it. It is important to ensure the quality of the simulation enables the educational experience to be positive for students.     

Evidence for teaching: what are faculty using?

The benefit of engaging in evidence-based teaching practice (EBTP) is to identify and implement best practices in nursing education. Unfortunately, nursing education has made little forward movement in identifying the evidence upon which faculty base their teaching practices. A national online survey of 295 nurse educators from 86 programs revealed the evidence they use in their teaching practices as well as the facilitators and barriers to EBTP. The majority of participants indicated they used quantitative and qualitative research (94 percent) but also considered written course evaluations, conference information, class feedback, and student comments as evidence. Participants identified personal beliefs as the most frequent facilitator to EBTP with 25 percent indicating their institution as a barrier. As EBTP offers a guide to establishing best practices in nursing education, building a science of nursing education is the responsibility of all nurse educators.     

Instagram: A platform for ultrasound education?

IntroductionSocial media has become an integral part of our daily life with 38 million users in the UK alone and the average user being logged-in for 135 minutes daily. Social media is increasingly used to disseminate learning in a variety of fields including medicine.ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to assess the proportion of Instagram posts using #ultrasound for educational content and compare this with #radiology. We also aimed to assess the changes in the use of the newly introduced #UltrasoundEd for ultrasound education since its introduction in November 2018.MethodsInstagram searches were conducted using the hashtags: #ultrasound and #radiology, and the content of the first 100 posts from each search was analysed and classified into being either social or educational. A second search using #UltrasoundEd was conducted at baseline, 3 months and 12 months. Fisher’s exact test was used to compare categorical data.ResultsThe searches retrieved 461,884 #ultrasound and 243,011 #radiology posts. From the first 100 #ultrasound posts, 11 were educational and 89 were social. The social posts predominantly related to announcements of pregnancy. Of the 100 #radiology posts, 49 were educational, while 51 were classified as social. The number of posts with the hashtag #UltrasoundEd increased over the study period from 15 to 232, with the majority of posts being educational.ConclusionsEducational ultrasound content is difficult to separate from social posts on Instagram. The use of the hashtag #UltrasoundEd makes educational ultrasound content more readily identifiable.