Innovative Nursing Gerontology

Course Receives National Honors

Contact: Pam Roe
S218 School of Nursing
(573) 884-2690

December 6 , 2006

COLUMBIA , Mo. – In a time where nurses are in high demand and the general population grows older, the MU Sinclair School of Nursing has created an innovative approach to teaching gerontology. So innovative, in fact, that it was awarded top honors in the John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing/American Association of Colleges of Nursing 2006 Awards for Baccalaureate Education in Geriatric Nursing.

“Most undergraduate nursing courses focus on older adults in long-term care facilities,” said Myra Aud, course faculty member. “We thought this was insufficient exposure to older adults and their health-care concerns, since most of them don't live in nursing homes.”

Faculty members were well aware of the needs of older adults' who don't live in nursing homes when they started developing the curriculum in 2000. They wanted to expose nursing students to the full range of services designed for older adults, so they took advantage of interdisciplinary opportunities at MU. Today students work with the School's home-health agency, Sinclair Home Care (now under the management of the University Hospital ); the School of Health Professions ' Adult Daycare Connection; two local nursing homes and two assisted living facilities specially designed for people with dementia.

“We wanted a clinical program that covered the continuum of care for seniors,” Aud said, “and woven throughout this larger picture, is a focus on dementia. We don't allow the clinical site visits to be used for learning nursing basics such as personal care and medication administration . We use this time to assess the roles of the registered nurse in the skilled nursing setting as well as to conduct specific health-related activities with this population.”

Offered every semester to nursing students in the last half of their junior year, this course gives them the opportunity to experience nursing care outside the hospital setting.

“Students also learn to communicate with older adults who are cognitively impaired and those who aren't,” Aud said. “It's in these diverse clinical environments that nursing students learn about the health and life concerns of older adults as well as learn from their patient's wisdom.”

Now in its ninth year, this national awards program was created to recognize model nursing baccalaureate programs with a strong focus on gerontology. Beyond innovation, these programs must demonstrate relevance in the clinical environment and have the ability to be replicated at schools of nursing across the country.

“Given the rapid aging of our population, we need to insure that nurses in the educational pipeline are well prepared to provide the highest quality geriatric care possible,” said AACN President Jeanette Lancaster, PhD, RN, FAAN. “AACN is proud to join with the Hartford Institute in recognizing four schools of nursing whose work to strengthen the geriatric nursing curriculum will enhance the quality of care available to older adults.”

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