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Background: Spiritual care is espoused to be fundamental in children’s nursing; however, the extent to which current fundamental children’s nursing textbooks support and advocate spiritual care delivery by children’s nurses and nursing students is unknown.Aim and objectives: To examine whether or not fundamental undergraduate children’s nursing textbooks include spiritual care content.Methods: Five hundred and nineteen books were sampled from the Nursing and Midwifery Core Collection list (UK) using a survey, the Spirituality Textbook Analysis Tool (STAT) to collect data.Analysis and Results: 519 books were included in the study using the STAT and 13 books included content on children’s spirituality. There were a variety of textbooks in the audit of those that made reference to the search terms in the STAT, it was found that content mainly addressed only two areas; religious faiths and the dying child.Recommendations: Children’s nurses require education about children’s spiritual developmental stage and age appropriate spiritual assessment. A lack of detailed information in core children’s nursing textbooks means that this area of nursing practice may be taught as an adjunct to care and not as an element of holistic care which is the gold standard that children’s nurses should strive for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim To report on baseline outcomes of body mass index, eating habits and physical activity of a cohort of urban disadvantaged children from a longitudinal evaluation of a school based, health promoting initiative. Background The healthy schools programme was developed for implementation in schools located in disadvantaged areas of Dublin, Ireland. Design A prospective, cohort study design was implemented. Method A 3-year longitudinal evaluation was conducted in five intervention and two comparison schools between 2009-2011. Data were collected on each participating child to determine their eating habits, levels of physical activity and body mass index at year 1 (baseline), year 2 and year 3. Independent t-tests were used to compare mean values, chi-square and Fishers exact tests were used to compare proportions at baseline. Results Participation rates were over 50%. Older children reported eating on average more fruit and vegetables than younger children; breakfast was often eaten on the way to, or in school and in one age group 16·7% of intervention children reported they did not eat breakfast that day. Levels of physical activity varied with over 70% of younger children stating they never played a sport. In intervention schools over one quarter of all children were either overweight or obese. A comparison was conducted between the proportion of 9-year olds overweight and obese in our disadvantaged cohort and a national random sample of 8500 9-year olds and no important differences were observed. Conclusion Baseline results indicate that body mass index rates particularly among pre adolescent, urban disadvantaged girls are of concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nurse education curricula have to be continually reviewed to ensure that content remains applicable to contemporary healthcare developments. In this article, the authors report the findings of a research study that investigated the children's nursing component taught in all non-children's BSc Nursing degree programmes in Irish colleges. The aim of the study was to identify how European Union directives and national curriculum guidelines are interpreted in colleges, and to clarify the preparation that non-children's preregistration nursing students receive with respect to caring for children. The authors explored aspects related to children's nursing in all non-children's undergraduate pre-registration programmes, including curriculum content and its delivery, assessments and practice experiences. Data were collected by a specifically designed questionnaire based on the Requirements and Standards for Nurse Education Programmes (An Bord Altranais, 2005a; b). A university ethics committee provided ethical approval. The response rate was 54% (n=7), and data were analysed using SPSS 16 and content analysis. The authors' findings illustrated that the requirements and standards of all nursing programmes are interpreted in a variety of ways regarding children's nursing. Nationally, nursing content related to children needs to be reviewed in all nursing programmes to ensure consistency among providers. Healthcare requirements for children and families need to be heightened within curricula for all disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first teaching hospital for sick children in Great Britain and Ireland opened in Dublin in 1821. From then, the development of sick children's nursing in Ireland followed a similar path to that in many other countries until a national report in 2000 recognised that post registration pathways alone were unlikely to meet future health service needs for suitably qualified and flexible children's nurses. In 2006, a four and a half year integrated children's and general nursing pre registration degree programme started on four sites. At the same time, the existing 18 month post registration course was replaced with an accelerated one year diploma programme. The full integration of children's nursing into third level at both pre and post registration level was a welcome development in Ireland. Further work is under way to address the remaining educational challenges: post graduate and doctoral programmes, preparation of advanced nurse practitioners and continuing professional education for qualified children's nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Role transition from staff nurse to post-registration student is not a well researched area of nursing. Two previous Irish studies have been reported of the experiences of post-registration midwifery students [McCrea, H., Thompson, K., Carswell, L., Whittington, D., 1994. Student midwives’ learning experience on the wards. Journal of Clinical Nursing 3, 97–102; Begley, C., 1997. Midwives in the making: a longitudinal study of the experiences of student midwives during their two-year training in Ireland. Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College, Dublin.] but there is limited research into post-registration children’s student nurses experiences. A broadly phenomenological approach was employed to interpret what it means to be a post-registration children’s student nurse during the first clinical placement. Data was collected from a purposive sample of six students, using unstructured tape recorded interviews. Thematic content analysis was utilised to produce an interpretation of nurses’ experience within the first clinical placement. The findings reflect the participants’ role confusion when changing from being a staff nurse in one discipline of nursing to being a post-registration student in another. They find previous experience is not recognised and that students originating from different disciplines in nursing have different experiences within the first placement. Coping mechanisms are discussed along with preparation for and supports available in the clinical area. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]