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Background: Nursing education is moving toward competency-based education and assessment. Nurse educators will need to adopt strategies to develop and measure competence. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if screen-based virtual patient simulation is an effective strategy to assist learners in developing competencies and subcompetencies required in nursing practice. Methods: Thirteen questions (6 assessment and clinical reasoning focused, 4 clinical judgment focused, 3 attitude and socialization to nursing focused), aligned with the competencies of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Essentials, were developed for a pre-/posttest design to evaluate student competency development. Results: Senior nursing students (n = 52) participated; 1-tailed paired t test identified 12 of 13 items as statistically significant. Posttest scores were greater than pretest scores. Conclusions: The change in mean scores from pre- to posttest suggests screen-based virtual patient simulation scenarios improve learners' competence in addressing the patient's physical and psychological comfort and decreased caregiver biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Transgender individuals experience considerable prejudice and bias, creating barriers to health care. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a virtual patient simulation scenario of caring for a transgender adult on nursing students' attitudes and beliefs about transgender people. Methods: A validated 29-item instrument developed to assess an individual's view of transgender identity was administered in a pre-/posttest nonequivalent-groups design to junior- and senior-level nursing students. Results: Statistically significant differences were found between the control and treatment groups for the subscale human value. Conclusions: Findings support experiential learning in nursing as an effective tool in teaching cultural competence and sensitivity when caring for transgender patients. Attitudes and beliefs of senior nursing students and junior nursing students toward transgender individuals differed, with senior students being more receptive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Student behaviors contained information about their practice of clinical competency. • Students exercised clinical judgment, person-centered care and professionalism. • Students' performance in gerontology versus mental health scenarios were significantly different. Few studies have connected nursing students' performance in simulations to clinical competencies exemplified in The Essentials and the NCJMM. This retrospective study examined the effectiveness of screen-based virtual patient simulations (VPS) in facilitating ten undergraduate prelicensure students' practice of clinical judgment, person-centered care, and professionalism. Multimodal transcripts capturing patient interactions, exam actions, and documentation in a gerontology and mental health scenario were analyzed using Transmodal Ordered Network Analysis (T/ONA). We examined the strength and order of connections students made to recognizing cues, analyzing cues, diagnosing and prioritizing hypotheses, generating solutions, evaluating outcomes, subjective assessment, therapeutic communication, and care-management and coordination. Both scenarios afforded opportunities for students to gather comprehensive data and make evidence-based and patient-centered care decisions. However, students' patterns of connection making were significantly different for virtual patients who presented palliative care versus mental health care needs. The assurance for nursing students' practice readiness can be realized through careful implementation of diverse assignment types and scenarios in VPS. T/ONA provides a novel and systematic approach for studying student behaviors in simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Caring for a virtual patient with HIV decreased discriminatory attitudes in students. • Virtual patient experiences provide learning context that didactic teaching does not. • Interacting with and responding to a virtual patient's needs can influence attitudes. People living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) face significant stigma and discrimination within the healthcare system. Using pretest-posttest non–equivalent groups design, the Health Care Provider HIV/AIDs Stigma Scale was administered to two cohorts of nursing students (N = 32) to evaluate effects of a virtual patient simulation of caring for a patient with HIV. No statistically significant effects were found. Clinical significance was noted in the treatment group, which demonstrated greater decreases in total score means and in discrimination and prejudice subscale means. Findings suggest participation in a virtual simulation of a patient living with HIV can positively impact nursing students' attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to more than double over the next four decades and to equal nearly one-fourth of the entire population by 2060. Recognizing that the health care workforce in the United States is not sufficiently prepared to meet the care needs of this growing population, the National Academy of Medicine has recommended curricular enhancements for health professional educational programs. To meet this challenge, the University of South Florida College of Nursing applied curriculum mapping principles and concepts to examine and align Family Nurse Practitioner and Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner program curricula for congruence with Partnership for Health in Aging multidisciplinary geriatric competencies. Through this process, we developed a geriatric-specific curriculum map and threaded geriatric-specific content, learning experiences, and learning assessment strategies to promote attainment of all 23 competencies. Given the growing role that nurse practitioners are projected to play in the delivery of primary care for older adults in the future, it is imperative that colleges and schools of nursing provide students with learning experiences to support attainment of the knowledge and skills graduates will need to care for older adults in practice. The techniques and strategies described here represent our approach. • The health care workforce in the United States is not sufficiently prepared to meet the needs of a growing older adult population. • Nurse practitioners will play a key role in meeting the care needs of older adults over the next four decades; Schools and colleges of nursing must prepare graduates with the knowledge and skills required. • Curriculum mapping can be used to evaluate and promote vertical and horizontal integration of geriatric content, learning experiences, and learning assessments in nurse practitioner curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In neoliberal times the nature of academic employment in universities has shifted dramatically. Precarious (fixed-term and casual) academic employment has proliferated, continuing academic employment has become more scarce and a wide gap has opened between the conditions of work and career trajectories of academics in continuing positions--for whom a semblance of the tenure system remains intact--and the growing number of academics on temporary, insecure contracts, for whom the prospect of academic unemployment ever looms. International research indicates that this shift toward academic precarity is gendered, with academic women typically over-represented in precarious academic employment and under-represented in continuing positions and vice versa for academic men. To further our understanding of the way rising academic precarity and its greater impact on academic women have played out in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this article reports on academic perceptions and experiences of precarious academic employment at a New Zealand university. Statistical and inductive analysis of a mixed-method survey of 914 academic staff reveals extensive academic precarity at the case study institution, an over-representation of women in precarious employment, many more negative than positive experiences of precarious employment, and high motivation amongst precarious academics to gain secure employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents the incorporation of dance into the classroom as a pedagogical strategy. It explores how the strategy models interdisciplinary work and boosts classroom interaction, and not just help students to embody Victorian culture and offers a useful historical context for the material. The author relates her experience of incorporating dance for her students at the University of Baltimore in Maryland, embodying Victorian literature into her classroom.

This article discusses various reports published within the issue including one which demonstrate the function of "Regency" as a category and argue for an awareness of the period's relationship to other historical moments, another which highlights the blending of genres, of discourses, of art forms, of racial categories, or of historical periods, and one which offers an alternative framework that can accommodate certain itinerant literary and cultural phenomena.

The article comments that one of the pleasures of reading, re-reading and teaching the works of the late 18th and early 19th centuries English novelist Jane Austen is the myriad new topics and ideas that emerge with each textual encounter. It indicates that the 19th-century social dance is one of the many historical contexts that is relevant to students. It also argues that dancing with Austen is an example of experiential, embodied learning that can bring students closer to the novelist.