Abstract
This paper presents the strategies used to teach millennial generation nursing students the leadership skills needed to provide quality and safe nursing care in the context of an experiential short-term study abroad program in Jamaica. To achieve this educational goal and to meet the requirements specific to the course, the program was built on a framework of two interrelated approaches: concept-based learning and cultural immersion. Cultural immersion was accomplished through carefully selected site visits, activities, and assignments. Through active-learning projects that used assessment, planning, and implementation, students were required to apply learned nursing knowledge and skills and to demonstrate essential nursing leadership skills. Students’ experiences, reflections, and applications were assessed through formative and summative evaluation.
Highlights
Nursing is the nation’s largest healthcare profession, with over 3.1 million registered nurses nationwide [1]
The purpose of this paper is to report on an experiential study abroad program in Jamaica program to teach nursing students the leadership skills required to provide quality and safe nursing care
It is imperative that nursing faculty develop activities that support the new healthcare paradigm with its emphasis on building leadership and delegation skills and establishing the graduate nurse professional identity [18]. This qualitative and descriptive study was conducted in Jamaica, which served as the location for an experiential learning program to teach Millennial generation nursing students the leadership skills required for the provision of quality and safe nursing care
Summary
Nursing is the nation’s largest healthcare profession, with over 3.1 million registered nurses nationwide [1]. With the Affordable Care Act’s expanding the need to care for more than 30 million newly insured citizens and the rapidly aging Baby Boomer population (individuals born between 1946 and 1964), there is an increasing demand for nurses. New nursing school graduates will need to replace roughly 573,000 hospital RNs who will retire over the 15-20 years [5]. Taking their place will be the Millennial generation (individuals born in the early 1980s to the mid 2000s), who are the largest generation in the United States, comprising roughly one-third of the total population in 2013.With the anticipated need for nurses in the future, many Millennial students have chosen to enter the nursing profession. Buerhaus et al [2] found a 62% increase in the number of 23- to 26-year-olds who became RNs between 2002 and 2009
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