Public health agencies must develop community empowerment skills in the 21st century, skills which improve the health status of the population, and lead to eliminating health disparities. With a health care system in transition, community health nursing (CHN) students must be prepared to work collaboratively with health departments and communities to facilitate the building of community empowerment skills. The purpose of this paper is to describe a develping clinical/field experience for undergraduate CHNs in building community empowerment skills. At the suggestion of public health nurses (PHNs), students have, over the past two years, been involved in pilot projects with the local health department to build community empowerment skills in marginalized communities with poor health indicators. Students are given an introduction to Community Empowerment Models, a critique of models, and examples of empowerment in the local community by a PHN community organizer. The empowerment model, now in the process of being adopted county-wide, provides an ideal clinical/field experience for students who are assigned to work with the multi-disciplinary teams in varied neighborhoods. Selected home visits by students are also assigned in the targeted neighborhoods to underscore needs for empowerment at both micro and macro levels (e.g., safety, housing). Student evaluations of the experience are extremely positive, as students voice a preference for the empowerment teamwork over traditional fieldwork sites such as home health. This developing empowerment-focused fieldwork for undergraduates promises to prepare students for multidisciplinary teamwork in eliminating health disparities by carrying out core public health functions in the future.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 1) articulate the procedure for developing clinical/field site experience in community empowerment for undergraduate community health nursing students; 2) describe three common empowerment models and state strengths and weaknesses
Keywords: Community Collaboration, Public Health Nursing
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Samuel Merritt College
435 Hawthorne Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.