Clinical teleconferencing: bringing the patient to the classroom

The confidence to act on clinical judgment, ask for help, and juggle multiple competing priorities is best developed within a clinical setting. Traditional classroom learning, which is often static, does not support learning these skills or help new students learn how to "be" a nurse. Student nurses need frequent and repeated exposure to expert nurses and clinical environments. Traditional teaching methods may not be sufficient to meet these needs.

This project employs a strategy that supplies situated, context-driven learning with the aim of improving clinical reasoning by bringing real-world, real-time clinical scenarios into the classroom via audio conferencing. This classroom teaching strategy is based on the principles of learner-centered teaching, and the aim is to incorporate real-world clinical information into the classroom. Students are introduced to "real-time report" from special care areas as the basis for class activities and discussion.

Feedback on this model was sought through course evaluation data, focus groups with students, and participating nurses. NCLEX pass rate remained unchanged as a result of this teaching strategy.

In this model, the classroom changes from being a physical place where knowledge is acquired to a place where knowledge is translated from and applied to practice.