Exploring how we can improve nursing education together! Practical active learning ideas and interesting thoughts about nursing education.
🥶 Preparing nurses who don’t freeze when plans change: Ways of Thinking Part 3
Published 4 months ago • 4 min read
All of higher education is grappling with the implications of AI on our work as educators, but also what it means for our profession. Every nurse will face tough situations, complicated patient problems, and ethical questions that don’t have a clear answer. And students can turn to AI to brainstorm solutions to all of these.
A student nurse using AI at clinical
A nursing student might type into an AI tool:
🖥️ “My patient with heart failure is suddenly short of breath even though they’re on oxygen. What should I do first?”
An AI-generated response might look something like:
🤖 “For a patient with heart failure and sudden shortness of breath, consider elevating the head of the bed, assessing vital signs, listening for lung sounds, checking oxygen saturation, and notifying the provider. This could indicate pulmonary edema, which requires prompt intervention.”
On the surface, this is helpful. It lists appropriate actions and identifies a serious concern.
But what the AI can’t do is replicate the why or tailor advice to the specific context of that student’s patient. This is where nurse educators come in. We help students sort through the noise, question sources, and adapt solutions to real-life, often messy clinical situations.
Which brings us to the third type of thinking: PROBLEM-SOLVING
In case you missed the previous editions of this series, you can catch up below:
Problem-solving is the ability to work through uncertainty with persistence, creativity, and flexibility. This type of thinking includes:
🪞 reflecting on what worked and what didn’t to refine your approach
🗂 making a plan and adjusting as new information comes in
💥 using failure as feedback, adjusting course without losing momentum
🌱 a problem-solving mindset within your community to innovate without fear
Project-Based Learning
In K–12 education, project-based learning (PBL) has become a popular approach for helping students move beyond memorization to deeper thinking. Instead of isolated assignments, students tackle an open-ended problem or real-world challenge, such as designing a community garden or opening a school coffee shop. The project unfolds over time, requiring them to research, plan, collaborate, troubleshoot, and present a final product.
Like K–12 students who learn by navigating project unknowns, nursing students benefit from complex scenarios with many possible correct answers. In nursing, this mindset prepares students for safe, flexible, resilient practice. Here’s an active learning tool to develop this thinking.
Mini Quality Improvement Project
This is an excellent way to introduce students to how quality improvement works in a healthcare setting. It would be an excellent activity to use in post-conference, as it could directly connect to the unit you are working on. It could also work well as a warm-up activity in class that spans a few weeks.
Launch the challenge to the group. Present a clinical problem: “Your unit has experienced an increase in patient falls this quarter. How can you help reduce them?”
Week 1 - Research and explore the current evidence. Students gather evidence from clinical practice guidelines, hospital policies, and recent journal articles about fall prevention techniques.
Week 2 - Plan and design a solution. In groups, students propose an intervention, such as adjusting the rounding schedule, creating a patient education plan, or suggesting an environmental change.
Week 3 - Present and reflect. Student groups share their proposed solution, possibly role-playing how the intervention would work. Listeners predict potential barriers, such as staffing issues, patient refusal, or resource limitations, and then brainstorm solutions.
Vote or share. After a large group discussion, the group can vote on a favorite intervention. Consider sharing it with your unit or helping implement it.
When discussing this activity, you could share examples of situations where nurses or nursing students have made a difference through a small project. Here are a few examples that come to mind from my own experience:
📹 Nurses on the medical unit where I held clinical implemented a video monitoring system to prevent falls. This allowed one trained tech to monitor for falls for 10 high risk patients.
💊A student in my clinical was able to successfully change the standard administration time for omeprazole for all patients, ensuring it was not administered with food. It was previously scheduled when the meal trays would arrive.
Clinical Decision Cards
If you are looking for a tool that helps students practice problem-solving thinking, without any extra work for you, the Clinical Decision Cards are exactly that spark.
Each card presents an abnormal assessment or red flag that students must address using their existing patient case, lab results, and patient history. Because care doesn’t always go to plan, these cards help students to adapt to situations they may not always get to experience in clinical.
Problem-solving grows with practice and reflection. By weaving in activities like these during class, post-conference, or simulation debriefings, you help students build confidence to navigate change and see themselves as capable problem-solvers.
See you next week for the final installment of this series!
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