Nursing Education and Clinical Conferences and Their Types In Clinical Learning Environment
What are Clinical Conferences In Nursing Education
Clinical conferences are group learning experiences that are an integral part of the clinical experience. The use of clinical conferences in nursing is common. Conferences can provide meaningful learning experiences and excellent opportunities for students to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Through conferences students can develop critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills (Wink, 1995) and acquire confidence in their ability to express themselves with clarity and logic. Successful clinical conferences are planned. Plans for conferences should take into consideration the curriculum and the learner.
An identification of the purpose, topic, process, strategies, and methods of evaluation are essential if the teacher is to be instrumental in bridging the gap between theory and clinical practice.
Types of Clinical Conferences In Nursing Education
The conferences can include traditional preclinical, midclinical, and postclinical conferencing. As a result of advancing technology, conferences may take place through electronic media and online. As such, the rules and regulations related to HIPAA and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act apply to clinical groups that use clinical conferencing by electronic media.
Student groups must be aware of maintaining patient confidentiality as the group presents patient data by electronic means. Using this form of conferencing is a means of using technology while supporting the needs of students. Some may be doing clinical assignments at different sites and electronic conferencing brings students together where debriefing can occur without having to travel to a central location.
Traditional Conferences
Preclinical, mid clinical, and post clinical conferences by nature are small group discussion periods that immediately precede, occur during, or follow a clinical experience. Each provides opportunities for discussion. In preclinical conferences, students share information about upcoming experiences, ask questions, express concerns, and seek clarification about plans for care.
Preclinical conferences also provide opportunities for faculty to correct student misconceptions, identify problem areas, assess student thinking, and identify student readiness to implement care. Midclinical conferencing, in contrast to preclinical and postclinical conferencing, is another form of gathering students together to provide some form of midclinical debriefing.
It has been found that, while doing a 12-hour clinical day, this gives students an opportunity to gather to share pertinent patient information and plan for further interventions, which may include patient teaching and discharge planning. This midclinical conference time also may help students collectively evaluate the efficacy of prior patient interventions.
This exchange of data, in the form of a midconference, is a method of imparting knowledge and sharing common data with the intent of positively affecting patient care. Postclinical conferences provide a forum in which students and faculty can discuss the clinical experiences, share information, analyze clinical situations, clarify relationships, identify problems, ventilate feelings, and develop support systems.
In postclinical conferences there is interaction between the teacher and the students, which offers both a medium for learning and an exchange resulting in meaningful experiences.
Online Conferences
Online conferencing, occurring before or after clinical experiences, can assist students to come together in a virtual environment to exchange ideas, solve problems, discuss alternatives, and acquire information about issues of clinical care that occurred before or during the clinical experience (Gaberson, Oermann, & Shellenberger, 2015).
Student and Faculty Roles during Conferences
Both students and faculty have specific roles in conferences. Student should be made aware of their role as active participants. As such, they should defend choices of care, clarify points of view, explore alternatives, and practice decision making. A student may also assume the role of group leader.
Faculty serve as conference facilitators by supporting, encouraging, and sharing information; posing questions and asking for alternative hypotheses; giving feedback; helping students identify patterns; and guiding the debriefing process.
As conferences are facilitated, efforts should be made to ask higher-level questions that assist students in applying knowledge to clinical situations (Gaberson et al., 2015). Conferences also provide opportunities for students to apply group processes and develop team building skills.
Evaluating the Conferences
Conferences should be evaluated in light of their effectiveness and goal accomplishment. The teacher should obtain and provide feedback regarding the extent to which goals were accomplished, the effectiveness of the teaching methods or strategies, and the degree of learning achieved. The data from the evaluation can be used for planning future conferences.
In summary, traditional and electronic conferences play a significant role in facilitating students’ learning. Conferences afford opportunities for enhancing critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and decision-making skills; for creating new meaning for care issues; and for enhancing group process and team-building skills.
Successful conferences are planned. Inherent in planning are identifying the purpose, selecting topics, selecting teaching methods, and conducting and evaluating these methods.