Creating Innovative Educational Strategies for Undergraduate Public Health Nursing Students

Public health nursing educators strive to help undergraduate students practice the population-focused concepts and skills they are taught in class across a variety of clinical settings and agencies. Finding appropriate clinical placements for students is no mean feat. Challenges with clinical placements include difficulties with agency contract negotiations, desirable agencies without sufficient staff to serve as preceptors, and loss of time and financial resources incurred with costly travel to distant sites. The purpose of this session is to describe innovative educational strategies that can be used by educators to augment traditional clinical placements. We will describe results of educational innovations published recently in the nursing literature in addition to sharing information gleaned from offering two public health nursing simulations on campus, immersive service learning trips, and virtual case studies. We have learned that educators, in addition to public health nurses, must rely on partnerships, creativity, and resourcefulness to craft educational experiences that will effectively train our future public health workforce. Specific recommendations that public health nursing educators can employ will be discussed and shared.