This chapter reviews prevention, including genetic counseling. It discusses genetic testing for diagnosis as opposed to screening and the treatment for genetic disease. Methods of prevention begin with education of the public and health care professionals and identification of those at risk. Genetic counseling is the process of helping people understand and adapt to the medical, psychological, and familial implications of genetic contributions to disease. The malignant cells often exhibit aneuploidy as well as translocations that are found only within the tumor cells. Genetic errors that arise from specific cell lines are somatic mutations. It is suggested that there is a thorough collection of family, genetic, and medical history for children entering the adoption process. Nurses may play a variety of roles in genetic counseling that reflect their preparation, area of practice, primary functions, and setting. The chapter explains the incidence of chromosome abnormalities.

Objectives have been used for decades in nursing education to set the stage for what is expected of students and to guide faculty in planning teaching and assessment. However, nursing education is evolving and the timeworn practices used to write objectives must evolve as well. This chapter focuses on how to write broad behavioral objectives to support learning in a constructivist, learner-centered online environment to guide teaching and learning that are in step with today’s innovations in education and that follow the call for radical transformation in nursing education. Objectives focused on the desired learning outcomes or intended behavior changes, termed performance. The psychomotor domain is the skills domain in the narrow sense of the word, in that this domain provides a means of identifying outcomes that involve fine, manual, and gross motor movements.

This chapter examines pre- and postconference expectations and activities, explores forms to be used by the professor and the students, suggests care plans and patient assignments, and describes sample concept maps and a math skills assessment. A student with no experience in health care may be shy or sheepish when it comes to hands-on care. It may be of benefit for the students to be paired in the first few weeks of clinical classes. The care plan forms can help guide the student through the nursing process. Medication forms will help the student learn about various medications. Nursing education has adopted the use of concepts maps to assist students in gathering patient information. Patient safety is the number one priority for all health care professionals. Dose calculations are a daily activity for nurses.

This chapter explains the seminal Institute of Medicine (IOM) report: The Future of Nursing (FoN): Leading Change, Advancing Health and the background organizations that wrote it. It demonstrates some key recommendations of FoN: Leading Change, Advancing Health report and its “fit” with Indian Country. The chapter differentiates between challenges in obtaining nursing education in Indian Country and those in dominant culture settings. The IOM’s effort with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) on the FoN has been noticed by many, yet direct care nurses are largely unaware of the report. The chapter outlines the FoN recommendations into two groups: gaining education, practicing to its fullest scope, and pushing for more, including lifelong learning; and shaping policy, being at the table as full partners in health care redesign, and leading change. For American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) nurses graduating from tribal colleges and universities (TCU), the majority will have an associate’s degree.

Healthcare is in a state of rapid change. Although practice environments have become more complex, educational delivery methods have remained stagnant. Innovative technologies provide opportunities to enhance nursing student learning and help nursing programs become more responsive to changes in the practice environment; however, obstacles may hinder successful implementation. With the increasing complexity of today’s health care environment, innovations in nursing curricula are necessary. This chapter explores some of the general challenges associated with the integration of innovative educational technologies, as well as some challenges unique to virtual simulation. It helps the reader to analyze the challenges of integrating educational technologies into nursing education associated with faculty, administrators, and students. It also helps the reader to examine practical and philosophical barriers related to technology integration and explores challenges unique to the adoption of virtual simulation.

Simulation has many advantages for nursing education, some of which include creating safe learning environments for students and reinforcing information learned in the classroom; it also has the advantage of being available in inclement weather as well as 24 hours a day for student access. Simulation in nursing is one of many methods used for teaching students. Teaching and learning in a virtual learning environment has many advantages for administrators, faculty, and students. One of the advantages includes the use of other disciplines to help create or participate in a virtual world learning experience. The virtual learning environment can be created to look similar to real communities, disaster areas, or homes, with avatars populating that environment. The advantage to using virtual reality, rather than a real-life experience, is that in real life, students could be immersed in an environment that could cause them harm.

This chapter examines the evolution of caring in nursing and nursing curricula. It explores the philosophies and theories of being and becoming that anchor a Caring Science curriculum. The chapter helps the caring-healing nurse able to understand how alternative educational pedagogies support the values of a Caring Science curriculum. It summarizes the ways in which a Caring Science curriculum can help nurses develop Caring Literacies through various classroom pedagogies, development of a community of caring/learning, and self-care. It identifies ways to embody (through being/becoming) Caritas Literacies in nursing education to promote the development of caring-healing nurses. The chapter discusses the meaning and values of being and becoming a nurse grounded in Caring Science. Finally, it proposes the many benefits of framing a nursing curriculum in Caring Science, including student affirmations of this process.

There is abundant evidence of the importance of sleep and sleep disorders in nursing practice. This chapter provides a perspective on future directions in nursing research, practice, and education relative to sleep promotion and prevention and treatment of sleep disorders. It also provides an opportunity to examine some of the exciting possibilities and challenges for advancing sleep science and the implementation of this evidence in the discipline of nursing. While the contributions of nurses to sleep science are growing, the application of science to practice and pedagogy lags behind scientific progress. The chapter presents an overview of opportunities and possible directions for nursing scholarship related to sleep, and also presents an overview of current trends that intersect with the need for evidence-based practice in sleep promotion, and suggest implications for nursing curricula. The effort will require creativity, dedication, strategic planning and successful interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as collaborations within nursing.

This chapter discusses the historical background of the mentor connection and mentoring relationships in nursing, different types of support relationships and mentors. It also discusses why and when nurse need mentors and early career challenges and mentoring. The mentor connection is a developmental, empowering, nurturing relationship extending over time, in which mutual sharing, learning, and growth occur in an atmosphere of respect, collegiality, and affirmation. Clearly, mentor connections and networks were integral to the developmental experience of successful career-oriented men. Mentoring is a vital component of professional nursing and that mentors are essential for nurses’ ongoing development and leadership achievement. In organizations, mentoring relationships serve as an antidote to disrespectful attitudes and behaviors among nurses and physicians and other health care providers. Mentors mentoring activities can be broken down into two categories: career functions and psychosocial functions.

This chapter presents some of the educational strategies and implications of integrative teaching and learning. It describes two major types of integrative strategies that follow the logic of practice. First, multiple examples of how to coach situated learning in actual practice that have proven successful in developing embodied knowledge and skillful, intelligent performance, are detailed. Second, a Thinking-In-Action approach to integrating classroom with clinical teaching exemplifies how to teach learners to use extensive scientific, technological, and theoretical knowledge in the context of an unfolding patient situation that changes over time, while imaginatively responding to the patient’s multiple needs and other demands in the situation. In order to be effective clinicians, the student and developing nurse must progress to grasping the nature of whole clinical situations, developing an experience-based sense of salience and using multiple frames of reference that encompass patient and family-focused care.