Policy-Focused Service-Learning as a Capstone: Teaching Essentials of Baccalaureate Nursing Education

The advancing accountability of nurses and nurse educators requires students to develop knowledge, skills, and judgment on a continuum of focus from individual patients to the broader context of care.

A dynamic capstone policy course was developed by applying the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice and capitalizing on related benefits of service-learning pedagogy. It shifts the approach from an intangible didactic lecture on policy and institutional structures to hands-on experiences in actual policy environment and patient health intersections. Acting as nurse consultants, students help clients address a system-based problem. Reflective assignments reinforce student learning as they take cumulative inventory of baccalaureate accomplishments.

Competencies in professionalism, teamwork and collaboration, communication, problem solving, and quality assurance are assessed. Students have engaged at sophisticated levels of practice and advocacy.

Situating capstone service-learning in a nursing policy course appears to sensitize students to perspectives of all ecological levels and desensitizes their discomfort in the policy arena. Implications for research include identifying and implementing measures of success in program outcomes. [J Nurs Educ. 2016;55(10):583-586.].