Baccalaureate educator use of environment-based strategies to teach diagnostic patterns

Baccalaureate nurse educators reported that their use of 10 environment-based strategies in the classroom or clinical setting may foster recognition of diagnostic patterns likely to be encountered in clinical practice. Environment-based strategies are verbal or print materials that draw attention to a particular aspect of what is being taught and that draw attention to important information. A national sample of 255 full-time baccalaureate educators (56 per cent return rate) from 28 randomly selected programs completed a questionnaire. The reliability estimate related to the 10 items was 0.70. Most respondents reported use of all 10 environment-based strategies with a minimum reported use of 60 per cent for each strategy on at least a "sometimes" basis. The most frequently reported use of a strategy on a "greater than sometimes" basis was the transparency (75 per cent). Color and print differences were the most infrequently used at 40 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively. The results of this study show that faculty, either consciously or unconsciously, use the environment-based strategies to facilitate student selection of key diagnostic indicators. Increasing educators' awareness of such benefits to students may stimulate further research in this area. Methods to help students decipher significant health status indicators from associated ones are clearly needed so that timely intervention can be used to prevent harm to patients.