The Use of Structured, Active, In-Person Learning to Connect Didactic Content with Clinical Scenarios in a Senior Level Nursing Leadership Course

The senior leadership course at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing includes both didactic and clinical components. The didactic portion delves into leadership topics and during clinical rotations the students witness nurses and patients navigate through complicated and emotional patient care experiences.

Structured, active, in-class learning (SAIL) activities in a classroom were used to connect didactic content with clinical scenarios. Different specialty-related clinical scenarios were presented to the students, and they were allocated a certain amount of time for discussion in small groups before sharing their outcomes with the whole group (think-pair-share).

Student evaluations showed that the percentage of students who rated each session as excellent increased each semester and feedback remained overwhelmingly positive; the consistently identified area for improvement is the timing and we plan to lengthen the sessions to address that.

Our team discovered that by shifting most of our simulation scenarios to SAIL, we provided the students with ample opportunities to speak in a dialectically rich environment about clinical scenarios while maintaining the interrelation between theory and practice. [.