Discussion The purpose of this project was to enhance cultural sensitivity, communication, and empathy in rural health NP students towards LEP...

Question Discussion Implications for PracticeThe purpose of this project was to enhance cultural sensitivity, communication, and empathy in rural health NP students towards LEP Spanish speaking Hispanic patients through a SP-SBLE set in a rural primary care clinic setting. Similar to previous studies, NP students in this study felt the SP-SBLE was a valuable and realistic experience that facilitated cultural awareness, empathy, and readiness for practice with patients who do not speak English from another culture (Foronda et al., 2018; Ndiwane, Koul & Theroux, 2014; Ndiwane et al., 2017; Ozkara, 2015). Students also felt that the experience assisted with identification of personal knowledge gaps and areas of weakness related to different cultures, health disparities, and communication with a non-English speaking patient and their family. Implementing an SP-SBLE with Hispanic LEP SPs created a realistic unparalleled opportunity for NP students to independently engage in a patient encounter, identify problems and plan care for a patient from another culture. The SP-SBLE although resource intensive (e.g., cost of recruiting, training and using community partners as SPs, purchase of Spanish interpretation books for students, faculty time from two universities, and cost of utilization of survey tools) also provided a concrete experience for students to reflect on and develop plans for future encounters. Perhaps more importantly, our findings also highlight important NP curriculum considerations. For example, MidWest 1 students had higher scores for both the pretest and posttest measures of all three scales of the TSET as well as the JSE. The relatively high pretest scores suggest that MidWest 1 students may have benefitted from the cultural competence content embedded across the graduate curriculum. At the same time, although the NP students in this project did not have a significant change in their JSE scores (Hojart, 2016), MidWest1 did demonstrate a small positive shift, while MidWest2 demonstrated a small negative shift after the SP-SBLE. The positive change for MidWest1 suggests that an SP-SBLE could be an effective educational strategy to enhance empathy in NP students. The lack of significance and the lower scores of MidWest 2 suggests that additional targeted educational interventions may be required to improve scores, and may reflect a lack of role modeling, or negative educational experiences (Hojart, 2016). Finally, both MidWest 1 and MidWest 2 students demonstrated significant improvement between pre and posttest on the Rural Characteristics scale. These findings suggest that enhanced cultural competence, empathy and knowledge can be facilitated through participation in a single SP- SBLE. These are also important findings that highlight the potential impact of fully embedding cultural competency components across the curriculum or integrating even a single SP-SBLE focusing on cultural sensitivity and empathy for vulnerable populations.LimitationsThis study utilized a convenience sample of rural health NP students from two Midwest universities during a single semester. This and the small sample size limit the generalizability of the findings. Consideration for a larger multisite prospective cohort study may provide further insight into the best methodology to enhance student awareness, empathy and readiness for practice with patients who do not speak English from another culture. In addition, this project relied only on student self-assessment and perceptions of awareness and empathy. It is possible that students responded in a manner that they felt would be acceptable or appropriate and as such this may represent an additional limitation to the findings. Future studies should also explore observational assessment and evaluation of student interactions with LEP patients and their family members to better establish the link between attitudes and behaviorsConclusionThe opportunity to interact with a Spanish-speaking SP and their family during a simulated primary care visit was viewed as a unique, eye-opening, and highly valuable experience. This project also provides support for the use of simulation as an effective strategy enhancing learning in NP programs. However, further exploration is warranted on the effectiveness of this strategy in meeting educational goals and objectives related to cultural competence and empathy with vulnerable populationsI need help answering these questions regarding article above Describe the key findings of the study in relation to purpose/question/hypothesis. Discuss the clarity of the authors’ explanation of key findings, including statistically significant & non-significant findings.Discuss whether the key findings were clinically significant/clinically important.Describe which findings were consistent with those expected. Describe which findings were unexpected. Were findings linked to the study framework? Describe the study’s limitations identified by the authors. Did the study have limitations not identified by the authors? Did the authors identify potential threats to design validity? Did the authors generalize the findings to other populations? If so, to what populations were generalizations made? Discuss appropriateness of any generalizations. What implications for practice were identified by the authors? Health Science Science Nursing NURS 5366 Share QuestionEmailCopy link Comments (0)