Distance graduate nursing education has been expanding. Although many didactic courses are taught through an online platform, there are often challenges to providing skill-based courses, such as advanced physical assessment, through an online format. To prepare and assess advanced practice nursing students on their clinical knowledge and physical assessment skills, an online course was developed using multisource feedback and videography. Students used videography to record themselves as they conducted physical assessments on a volunteer patient. Students then critiqued their own video, critiqued two of their colleagues' videos, and the final critiques of the videos were conducted by faculty. All students were expected to perform and pass a complete physical examination on a standardize patient as their final examination. The final scores of the students learning through the online course were equivalent to the scores achieved by the students in the traditional face-to-face physical assessment course.
Background:
Nurse practitioner students need effective communication skills to provide patient-centered care and work in diverse health care teams. Improvisation exercises, adapted from theater training, have been used to improve communication skills with health professions education and can be used in nurse practitioner education.
Method:
Fifty-eight family nurse practitioner students participated in a 2-hour workshop where they learned four improvisation exercises to improve listening skills, observational skills, and the ability to respond in the moment. Students learned the application of these skills for health care conversations.
Results:
The workshop was well received by the students, and evaluations reflected that students anticipated using the skills in professional practice and personal communications.
Conclusion:
Improvisation exercises can be used in nursing education to teach communication skills.
[
J Nurs Educ
. 2021;60(2):116–119.]
Pressing challenges in the treatment of invasive fungal infections (IFI) include emerging and rare pathogens, resistant/refractory infections, and antifungal armamentarium limited by toxicity, drug-drug interactions, and lack of oral formulations. Development of new antifungal drugs is hampered by the limitations of the available diagnostics; clinical trial endpoints; prolonged trial duration; difficulties in patient recruitment, including subpopulations (e.g., pediatrics); and heterogeneity of the IFIs. On August 4, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration convened a workshop that included IFI experts from academia, industry, and other government agencies to discuss the IFI landscape, unmet need, and potential strategies to facilitate the development of antifungal drugs for treatment and prophylaxis. This paper summarizes the key topics presented and discussed during the workshop, such as incentives and research support for drug developers, nonclinical development, clinical trial design challenges, lessons learned from industry, and potential collaborations to facilitate antifungal drug development.
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