Overview
NURS 437 is a 6-credit (12-week) paced professional practice course with required synchronous components, including a 4-week clinical placement in a community health agency. NURS 437 provides opportunities to integrate theory and develop further competencies related to family and community health nursing practice. The course involves simulations, videoconferences, class forum discussions, and completion of a clinical placement in a community agency. This preceptor-facilitated clinical placement may occur in a variety of settings, such as public health, school health, home care, or other community agencies. You will apply family and community health assessments and interventions, integrating the social determinants of health and social justice into your practice.
Outline
NURS 437 Professional Practice in Family and Community Health Promotion includes:
- Unit 1 Orientation, Introductions, and Preparation
- Unit 2 Social Determinants of Health
- Unit 3 Family Nursing and Therapeutic Conversations
- Unit 4 Clinical Experience
- Unit 5 Wrap-up and Reflections
This is a paced professional practice course with required synchronous components, including a 4-week clinical placement in a community health agency. The clinical practicum is based on nursing competencies as outlined in the College of Registered Nurses of Alberta: Entry-level Competencies for the Practicing Registered Nurse.
There are five times during this course when you will be required to participate in mandatory real-time experiential learning activities on an institutionally approved video conferencing platform in order to pass NURS 437 (three group video conferencing sessions, midpoint evaluation, and final evaluation). Participation in these required real-time experiential learning activities is a pass/fail element of the course. Other learning activities in this course are asynchronous.
Unit 1 occurs during the first 2 weeks, and Unit 5 during the last 2 weeks. Depending on when you are scheduled to complete your clinical placement, scheduling of Units 2, 3, and 4 can be adjusted. Your instructor lets you know your schedule at the start of the term.
This is a six-credit course. You should plan to spend approximately 10 hours/week completing the learning activities in Units 1, 2, 3, and 5. Unit 4 requires a 4-week, full-time clinical placement with your preceptor(s) in a community health agency. A pass in all learning activities is required to pass NURS 437.
Learning outcomes
Upon completion of NURS 437, you will be meet or exceed the following learning outcomes:
- Develop a collaborative, client-driven, practice
- Analyse how the social determinants of health affect clients, families, groups, and communities.
- Evaluate practice using entry-level competencies and the Canadian Nurses Association Code of Ethics.
- Evaluate generalist-level family nursing assessments, interventions, and evaluation practices.
- Utilize relevant research to support evidence-informed practices in community health nursing.
Evaluation
To receive credit for NURS 437, all virtual conferencing sessions, forum posts, and the clinical evaluation tool must be completed at a passing level. NURS 437 is a pass or fail learning environment.
The required assignments are as follows:
| Activity | Weight |
| Assignment 1: Forum Participation | Pass/Fail |
| Assignment 2: Videoconferencing Sessions (5 required) | Pass/Fail |
| Assignment 3: Post-LPN BN Clinical Evaluation Tool | Pass/Fail |
To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University’s online Calendar.
Materials
This course either does not have a course package or the textbooks are open-source material and available to students at no cost. This course has a Course Administration and Technology Fee, but students are not charged the Course Materials Fee.
There are no required textbooks in NURS 437. You will draw on your required resources from previous theory courses (i.e., NURS 434 and NURS 436), and you should have these resources available.