New graduate nurses often lack the skills necessary to care for clients at the end of life. Essential to designing an end-of-life course is awareness of the potential psychological impact of the content and providing students with appropriate support resources. An online, asynchronous end-of-life course was integrated into an undergraduate nursing curriculum. Weekly modules provided specific wellness tips that encouraged students to use them in caring for their clients and supporting their own well-being.

Intensifying demands on nurses have led to burnout and workforce instability. Dr. Stubin describes her study that examined nursing alumni perceptions of how effectively their undergraduate curriculum prepared them to manage workplace burnout. She conducted focus group sessions with 55 alumni, all of whom had less than 5 years of experience as registered nurses. Participant responses included feeling overwhelmed and emotional shock during transition, inadequate preparation for managing burnout and mental health challenges, and desire for institutional change. Dr. Stubin share strategies to build into the curriculum to enhance retention, prevent early-career burnout, and foster a more sustainable nursing workforce. You also might be interested in reading Dr. Stubin's earlier study: Promoting Nursing Student Mental Health Wellness: The Impact of Resilience-Building and Faculty Support

Inclusive education benefits all students, including neurodivergent and disabled learners, and reduces reliance on individually awarded accommodations. Dr. Megan Arbour provides a practical framework for embedding inclusive practices into nursing education. This framework  integrates Transparency in Learning and Teaching, Universal Design for Learning, and Competency-Based Education. With this approach, the educator anticipates diverse learner needs, promotes access, and strengthens student success and workforce readiness. More details are provided in their article.

Death and dying within the broader scope of end-of-life care causes anxiety in most students. Escape rooms in an online learning environment enable engagement among participants in a safe environment. Students assess and implement nursing measures to provide comfort to patients and families at the end of life. This podcast with Drs. Rebecca Clark and Jodi Fry (and their article) showcases how students apply critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and collaboration through the simulation, and highlights the importance of reflection and debriefing.

Ask Me 3® was designed to empower patients to better understand their health, prompting patients to ask: What is my main problem? What do I need to do? Why is it important for me to do this? By flipping the framework, faculty created a tool nursing students can use to better understand complex content, guide their study habits, and enhance critical thinking. This podcast (and article) showcases how the Ask Me 3® Institute for Healthcare Improvement tool can be used in diverse contexts to promote critical thinking, clinical reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making through progressive reflection and engagement.

Although clinical compliance requirements are similar for each hospital, each institution requires students to complete their education materials, resulting in unnecessary repetitive training and time lost gaining valuable clinical experience. Academic and hospital leaders in Maryland implemented a statewide, standardized prelicensure nursing compliance program accessed by nursing programs through a repository for students to complete before their first clinical experience and then annually. This ensures consistent learning and reduces inefficiencies by streamlining compliance processes and operations, resulting in saving time and resources. In this podcast and article, Drs. Crystal DeVance-Wilson, Jennifer Zipp, and Matt Rietschel describe their Universal Onboarding processes and challenges, and share advise with listeners.

How do students learn physical assessments most effectively and transfer these skills to clinical practice? Traditionally, students learn to conduct a complete assessment over several weeks and demonstrate their competence by performing assessments under the observation of a faculty member. However, this standard approach may result in students merely memorizing the steps to pass the assessment, potentially leading to difficulties in transferring these skills to real clinical situations. To address this issue, the faculty implemented a video technology method, allowing students to record themselves while assessing a peer partner. Using Swivel® technology (https://www.swivl.com), students capture their assessments on video and complete a self-evaluation before submitting their videos for grading. In the podcast and article, Dr. Delanie explains the teaching strategy.

Dr. Logan Camp-Spivey describes a simulation they developed that focuses on care of a transgender patient in an emergency situation. The simulation was created to address gaps in nursing students' exposure to transgender patient care and provide practice for students in responding to a code. As part of the simulation, students review the medical records, assess the patient, and respond to a code situation that requires CPR. The feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive. Learn more about the simulation in their article.

The school of nursing and affiliated medical center partnered to align the Nurse Residency Program with an undergraduate elective course in nursing leadership. This enabled associate degree nurses (ADN) to earn academic credit (3 credits) when they matriculate into the school's  RN to BSN program. Dr. Hallowell explains in the podcast and article that this initiative is designed to acknowledge the educational merit of structured transition-to-practice programs, encouraging academic advancement among ADN-prepared nurses. By granting academic credit for experiential learning, the model reduces redundancy, fosters leadership development, and supports lifelong learning.

The need to better prepare nursing graduates with essential competencies for beginning practice led to the creation of a unique nursing program that uses an apprenticeship model. In this program, second-degree students are paired with a nurse mentor who serves as their clinical educator for the length of the program. The health care systems employ students as nurse apprentices, provide wages and benefits, and are responsible for their tuition, books, and fees. In this podcast and article, the authors describe the program and curriculum, and share outcomes for students, the school, and the participating health care systems.