Hispanic Health Initiative: Student experiences with a patient navigator program

The purpose of this Hispanic Health Initiative was to coordinate resources to develop an integrated health care delivery system for low-income Hispanic women and their families. South Carolina has the fourth fastest growing Hispanic population in the nation. As the Hispanic community has grown, nursing efforts to optimally respond to their health care needs have been hampered by the lack of alternative learning resources, culturally sensitive curriculum, and appropriate communication skills. Within this project innovative educational strategies were implemented to build cultural competency among nursing students and faculty, as well as opportunities to identify interventions to improve Hispanic health services to improve pregnancy outcomes. Innovations implemented through this project paired undergraduate nursing students with minority women throughout their pregnancy. The students served as “health care navigators” assisting families in accessing resources in the health care system. In addition to the implementation of the students as patient navigators, the prenatal care was provided using the Centering Pregnancy model of group prenatal care. This model of prenatal care recognizes the importance of strong support networks and empowers women to make educated decisions about their health. The group setting of this model of care enhances the family social support. Students submitted field notes after each patient family or centering encounter. Analysis of the field notes indicated the following themes: 1) problems of health literacy, 2) prenatal care value, 3) domestic violence, and 4) lack of understanding of the benefit of well woman care. These themes will be expanded and discussed in this presentation.