POR: The Nurse Educator's Solution to the "Family File"

Authors

  • Nancy E. Watters

Abstract

The changing focus of health care delivery from acute care to community settings has tremendous implications for nursing and nursing education. Nurses must be prepared to move from the structure and specialization of their traditional hospital roles to function more autonomously in more generalized community-based programs. Although diploma programs for nurses are now incorporating some community experience into their two or three year programmes in Canada, the mandate for preparing nurses to function in community health settings continues to lie mainly at the baccalaureate level. Baccalaureate preparation is now generally seen as a minimum requirement for practitioners in this field. Although community health nursing has been integrated in a variety of ways into the baccalaureate programs across Canada, one consistent component of all of these programs is the "longitudinal family study". Throughout their educational preparation students are assigned to one or more families whom they visit regularly during each academic year. The assigned families vary in structure, developmental stage and level of wellness to correspond with student skill, interest and concurrent learning objectives.

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Published

1977-04-13

Issue

Section

Articles