Reinventing the "home visit": Learning from families

Background:The absence of an adequate number of quality clinical learning sites for undergraduate nursing students led to the development of a novel approach to clinical education with local schools serving as primary learning site for both pediatrics and public health. Designing quality learning experiences allowing comprehensive assessment opportunities, understanding the realities of living with a chronic health condition and effective care planning resulted in development of the Outreach Project. Today many nursing students never experience the invaluable learning that occurs with encounters in the home setting. Description: This learning project pairs a nursing student with a child living with a chronic health condition. The nursing student develops an ongoing relationship with the child and family including a visit to the home, a medication reconciliation and design of a plan of care for use at home, as well as a plan for school. Outreach project guidelines and will be shared as well as evaluative data from both nursing students and parent perspectives.Lessons Learned: Preparing nursing students for 1:1 encounters, phone contact with parents and home visit must be integrated into the clinical experience. Strategies for identifying potential families for this project will be shared as well as strategies to ensure safe, successful visits.