Nursing Students in Philly
By Andrea Mengel
“What’s my blood pressure today?” “Can you teach our children how to cross the street safely?” “What are the side effects of this new pill?” Every week nursing students hear questions like this during their clinical experience in the North Philadelphia community. In their final year of nursing courses (Nursing 231 and Nursing 232), all students spend two days a week for six weeks in community agencies providing health promotion and disease prevention services under the supervision of nursing faculty Laureen Tavolaro-Ryley, Jean Forsha Byrd and Ivory Coleman. Each year, our 130 nursing students provide 10,000 hours of health promotion services in the community. Residents of the community would not receive these services if the students were not present in neighborhood agencies. For example, school nurses often find their health promotion goals and program displaced by the immediate needs of
children who come to school sick or in crisis.
The 19130 Zip Code Project began thirteen years ago as a service-learning project to provide health promotion and disease prevention services in the community around the College. The Independence Foundation of Philadelphia has funded the project since its inception and the Zip Code initiatives are lead by M. Elaine Tagliareni, nursing faculty and Independence Foundation Chair. The Project fosters collaborative relationships with neighborhood agencies to meet local nursing needs including assessing the needs of individuals and families, collaborating with agency staff, developing sensitivity to the needs of culturally diverse populations and expanding health promotion and disease prevention services for residents across the life span. Students are in elementary, middle and high schools as well as pre-schools, senior centers, homeless shelters and community outreach programs.
During the community based experience, Nursing students begin by assessing the socioeconomic, health and cultural aspects of the neighborhood. Typical learning activities include blood pressure, hearing and vision screenings, teaching about prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, helping people with chronic illness manage their care and promoting healthy nutrition and exercise. As a result, students learn how to provide community based care, develop cultural competence, discover how people take care of themselves outside of the hospital and collaborate with other community based care givers.
In addition to providing services to the community, nursing students learn the value of collecting data to describe the care that they provide. Using a web based tool developed at CCP in collaboration with Information Technology, students record data about their nursing care. Data are analyzed by Institutional Research to describe care provided and populations served. Aggregate data are used by the faculty in curriculum planning and by the National Nursing Centers Consortium to develop a national data base describing community based health promotion activities. Participation in data collection enriches students understanding of the needs of people in the community and how research can improve nursing care.
During this clinical experience, students care for people on their own turf instead of in the hospital and learn first hand about health care needs and resources in the community while developing a broader view of nursing. For nursing students, the Zip Code Project brings to life the College’s mission of service to others, increased awareness of a diverse world, and opportunities for service and scholarship.
