Student reflections on promoting health and wellness of populations through education and practice

This study explored reflections of community health nursing students regarding promoting health and wellness of populations in a variety of nontraditional clinical experiences. Additionally, challenges in providing clinical placements for community health nursing students that help change the students' perspectives from a focus on the individual client in the acute care setting to population-focused care were examined. In this study community health clinical placements were designed and implemented through a partnership of a nursing program in a four-year university and various community organizations that provide services to different populations. Student reflections were evaluated by course faculty with several considerations: 1. In their reflections, do students perceive variations in health and wellness across population groups? 2. Are students able to develop and maintain a population-focused perspective? For example, identification of concerns such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes in minority populations? 3. Do student reflections demonstrate understanding of these variations as a public health concern and not as individual health problems?

A retrospective study of clinical written reflections completed as part of the course requirements for community health nursing were used by faculty to assess student knowledge, proficiency and attitudes related to public health concerns of health and wellness Content analysis was used to identify themes from student reflections. After analysis of the data, a rubric (derived from the data)was developed to ease evaluation of future data collected.