University of Colorado Denver, School of Nursing - Denver, CO
Team Members
Amy Barton, PhD, RN - Project Director
Gail Armstrong, ND, RN
Gayle Preheim, EdD, RN, CNAA, BC, CNE
Project Summary
The University of Colorado Denver College of Nursing’s QSEN project focused on integrating the 162 distinct knowledge, skills, and attitude (KSAs) elements at the heart of QSEN into the school’s existing curriculum. Project Director Amy Barton, Ph.D., R.N., together with faculty members Gail Armstrong, N.D., R.N., and Gayle Preheim, Ed.D., R.N., N.E.A.-B.C., C.N.E., began by working to determine when and where the KSAs should be introduced and emphasized to students in order to achieve the desired outcome: graduates prepared to succeed in real-world health care settings.
Barton and her colleagues developed a Delphi study – an iterative process designed to solicit and distill meaningful input from experts in the field, while building toward consensus among that group on the central questions of the study. In this instance, Barton drew 18 experts from 16 states into an online dialogue that effectively winnowed the “when and where” choices confronting the curriculum designers, and then, through successive rounds of questions, brought the experts to consensus.
That process led to an overhaul of the school’s curriculum, beginning with a re-imagining of the introductory Fundamentals of Nursing course, transforming it from a course that focused on teaching the psychomotor skills of nursing – the routine tasks that become second nature to nurses over time – to one that instead focuses on introducing each of the six QSEN core competencies: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, informatics and safety.
In addition, the school restructured its clinical education, reformulating its lab program – away from serving as a skills lab, and instead into a clinical education center, providing students with learning opportunities anchored in the QSEN competencies, and incorporating a new clinical component for students.
An example of the transformation in the Fundamentals of Nursing course is the treatment of informatics. Where once this area of instruction focused on timely and accurate documentation and charting, the emerging model of patient care calls for the use of information and technology to communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error and support decision-making. Students are taught why information and technology skills are essential for safe patient care, to apply technology and information management tools to support safe processes of care, and to value technologies supporting decision-making, error prevention, and care coordination. The new approach recognizes that information management is a rapidly expanding skill in healthcare, and that all members of a health care team contribute to an electronic health record that is a key tool in patient care.
The overhaul of the curriculum also led to new staffing, as the school transitioned from reliance on a part-time lab coordinator and a team of teaching assistants in the lab to a full-time coordinator who is a Nurse Practitioner, working with two clinical nurse specialists with expertise in emergency and critical care. That core staff team now instructs all students in the lab, adding additional clinical expertise and creating more continuity in instruction.
Presentations
Charlotte, June 2008 - At the COPA (not the Copacabana)… (Competency Outcome Performance Assessment)
News
RWJF Profiles QSEN Faculty Amy Barton
University of Colorado Denver College of Nursing receives grant from Colorado Trust