On-Going Collaboration with the Community as Client with Faculty Support

  • Textbook

Teaching Strategy Description:

Through weekly one hour conferences, faculty support students in applying four practice tools. The four practice tools are Community as Client: Assessment; Measuring the Determinants of Health; Health Promotion Approaches for Community as Client; and Program Planning. They are presented as worksheets that students can fill out to think critically about different components of public health. Students are expected to collaborate with community members and leaders to promote health and facilitated change. In addition to the completion of the four practice tools, there is a structured exercise in a weekly conference on inter-professional and inter-sectoral collaboration.

In addition to the tools, there are a series of 6 questions that prompt students to evaluate their placement. The inter-professional and inter-sectoral structured exercise is a series of questions plus reading to enable students to reflect their collaborative communication with community partners. The guiding questions are as follows:

  1. Based on the chapter by Smith et al. in Stamler and Yiu on primary health care, apply the 5 principles of the primary health care to the nursing actions in your community placement.
  2. Identify the determinants of health (e.g. income or personal coping) and their issue (e.g. poverty or unhealthy eating) in your placement and nursing actions taken to address them. How did your nursing action demonstrate inter-professional and inter-sectoral collaboration?
  3. Identify 2 other professionals or non-professionals (un-regulated) in your community placement.
  4. Identify a situation that you observed or participated in demonstrating how they work together and how they make decisions. Who informs decisions? Who makes decision? Are there power dynamics that are important to acknowledge?
  5. What is the role of the client in the decision making to address the determinants of health?
  6. What CHN standards of practice related to collaboration and partnerships? Give examples from community placement.

Teaching Context:

  • Level-three community clinical course with placement. Students are in the placement 6 hours/week for a total of 72 hours with weekly one hour conferences with faculty. Clinical placements for community as client include schools, parenting resource centres (OEYC), workplaces, ESL programs, and public health.

Resources:

Stamler, L., & Yiu, L. (Eds.) (2012). Community health nursing: A Canadian perspective (3rd ed.). Toronto, ON: Pearson Canada.

 

Submitted by: Ruth Schofield, McMaster University/Mohawk Conestoga College
Indicator(s): 4.1, 4.2, 4.3