Professional transformation: Public health nursing education and RN to BSN students

RN students returning for a baccalaureate degree represent a unique cohort of undergraduate students in terms of public health nursing knowledge and perspective. Despite years of practice in nursing, many RN to BSN students have limited knowledge of the principles and practice of public health or public health nursing upon entering the course. The learning experience for them often has profound and sometimes transformational effects.

Faculty have observed that these students express that the classroom and clinical learning of this course provide a positive and often life changing view of their role professionally as a nurse and personally as a global citizen. Faculty have found that often the rich personal and professional experience of RN students enable them to place the public health concepts in a real life context and to contrast their previously narrower paradigm with the macroscopic public health nursing paradigm.

RN students in a baccalaureate program are interviewed about their perceptions of community health nursing prior to and after taking an undergraduate public health nursing course. Results of the student feedback are discussed to support the mandate for public/community health nursing as a critical component to the development of professional nurses.