NSB131 Integrated Nursing Practice 1 Off campus

Unit Outline: Semester 2 2024, Kelvin Grove, Internal

Overview

This unit is a work integrated learning unit for you to develop practice skills through completing elements of learning in off-campus health care contexts. The unit is at the introductory stage of your course and builds on all preceding units. You are expected to draw on the knowledge and skills gained in previous units to develop their practice. You will be actively encouraged to apply learning from previous units to the nursing skills learnt in this unit. The unit is a concurrent requisite of NSB132 Integrated Nursing Practice 1 – On campus, which facilitates simulated application of theory to practice. Your knowledge of and ability to apply the NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Practice, National Health Priority Areas, Aged Care Quality Standards, and National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards are essential to nursing practice.

This is a designated unit which is essential to your course progression. Designated units include professional experience units, units requiring the development of particular skills, and units requiring demonstration of certain personal qualities. If you fail to achieve a satisfactory level of performance in a designated unit, you may be excluded from enrolment or will be put on academic probation. If you fail a designated unit twice within your course, you may be excluded. Supplementary assessment is not available on designated units.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

1. Demonstrate evidence-based practice, clinical reasoning, and decision making to provide culturally safe, quality, person-centred care consistent with the NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Practice and the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards at a novice level of practice.
2. Safely and accurately perform medication calculations and demonstrate safe administration of medicines in both the simulated environment and the clinical practice setting.
3. Demonstrate beginner level provision of safe, appropriate, and responsive quality nursing care for consumers, families, and the broader community.

Content

Learning Approaches

Experiential learning is at the forefront of this unit where you spend time in an off-campus healthcare environment with a focus on aged care. Preparation for this unit involves review of concepts explored in previous units to facilitate application to practice. You will prepare for this off-campus experience through simulated clinical situations and small group, clinical-skill-based practice activities incorporating a range of healthcare technologies.

You will also be directed to revisit safe practice principles, quality use of and administration of medicines, drawing on the learning activities and resources from NSB132 Integrated Nursing Practice 1 – On campus. A peer learning community of practice will be used to encourage active collaboration and to provide additional support and social engagement during placement off campus. Clinical supervisors will facilitate and support transfer of knowledge and skills to the real-world context in line with the requirements to satisfactorily complete the Australian Nursing Standards Assessment Tool (ANSAT). Learning experiences will include a focus on promoting implementation of evidence-based, scientific knowledge, communication, critical inquiry, digital literacy, and intra- and interprofessional collaboration as an ethical, socially inclusive, and culturally safe practitioner.

This unit requires mandatory attendance at clinical practice sessions and at off-campus clinical placement. Placement opportunities are negotiated by QUT with healthcare facilities, predominantly nursing homes, and are finite in number. You cannot organise your own placements. You must be available for shift-work rostering, which enables patient care to be delivered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Travel may be involved, and clinical placements can occur during semester breaks. Any absence from an off-campus clinical placement will reduce the opportunity for competence development – your performance may not be assessed and a grade of ‘Unsatisfactory’ may be awarded. If a student is absent due to illness during their clinical placement they are required to complete additional hours at a future time to meet the mandatory clinical completion hours for the unit, and cumulatively meet eligibility for graduation.  

Any clinical completion hours needed are calculated at the end of placement in individual units and if required, the grade will remain unfinalised until completion of the required number of clinical placement hours for the unit. There are limited opportunities to offer clinical completion hours. 

Where absence is due to special or unforeseeable circumstances independently supported by documentation (e.g. medical certificate), every effort will be made to accommodate the student in an alternate placement within the same semester or provide clinical completion hours at a later time. If due to the nature of the student’s special circumstances and/or limited placement availability an alternate placement cannot be negotiated, the student will be advised to seek withdrawal from the unit without academic or financial penalty. Standard course progression cannot be guaranteed following an Unsuccessful grade or withdrawal from a clinical placement unit.

You will receive further additional information and explanation consistent with this statement in lectures and information will be added to unit Canvas sites.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

You will be provided with feedback and guidance to assist your learning throughout the semester through:

• Formative feedback online and in class interactions throughout semester, individually and/or as a group
• Peer and clinical facilitator feedback on skills acquisition within clinical practice sessions
• Feedback on clinical performance will be provided by the clinical facilitator using the ANSAT tool at an interim timepoint halfway through your clinical placement and formally at the end of clinical placement

Assessment

Overview

There are 2 assessments to be completed in this unit. You must attend 100% of the clinical practice lab sessions where attendance is mandatory to be eligible for off-campus clinical placement. Options to make up a lab session due to legitimate illness or other absence are limited.

To receive a satisfactory grade in the unit complete mandatory clinical hours, all hours that a student is absent from clinical placement require attendance at a clinical completion option. There is no capacity to offer unlimited opportunities for clinical completion hours. Failure to self-select clinical completion hours when invited (through the Work Integrated Learning team) and/or attend agreed clinical completion hours will cause delays to course progression. Failure to complete agreed clinical completion hours will result in the unit grade being finalised as unsatisfactory.

You need to achieve 100% in the medication calculations (within Med+Safe) and achieve all criteria on the clinical performance assessment tool to achieve an overall satisfactory grade for this unit. There is no resubmission, as there is significant support to ensure successful achievement. The Med+Safe has many practice tests in-built for you to practice achieving 100%. These are requirements for you (and QUT) to ensure you can safely practice and act appropriately in an emergency as required by the National Health and Safety standards and ANMAC safety of the public standards. 

Unit Grading Scheme

S (Satisfactory) / U (Unsatisfactory)

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Med+Safe

Evidence of 100% successful completion of the required test in the Med+Safe application during the invigilated school-based exam time period.

MedSafe certificates are awarded once you have achieved 100% for the designated test. The Med+Safe certificate uploaded must reflect the date and time of your invigilated test, including your name exactly as it appears in the student's enrolment.

You may be eligible for one further opportunity to undertake this assessment if you do not achieve 100% in MedSafe. The same assessment conditions of invigilated exam apply.

Test questions focus on calculations and the development of knowledge and skills associated with medication administration and the quality use of medicines.

Failure to complete this assessment within the specified timeframes and invigilated conditions will result in an unsatisfactory grade in this unit and withdrawal from your off-campus clinical work experience.

Threshold Assessment:

You are required to achieve a satisfactory grade in this assessment item to receive an overall satisfactory grade for the unit. Professional accreditation mandates demonstration of knowledge of safe practice and medication safety prior to work integrated learning.  

Assessment: Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.

In your assigned clinical placement, you will be assessed on your ability to demonstrate a range of knowledge, skills, and attributes in relation to the provision of safe, quality, person-centred care. Assessment performance is determined in line with the NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Practice using the Australian Nursing Standards Assessment Tool (ANSAT). You are required to demonstrate satisfactory achievement of the 7 standards (and related criteria) for this level. Each criterion of the ANSAT must be achieved satisfactorily and 100% attendance is required at off-campus clinical placement.

Threshold Assessment:

Assessment Item 2 requires 100% attendance at an off-campus clinical placement and a satisfactory pass on the clinical placement assessment tool, to pass the unit. Re-submission is not available for an unsatisfactory result for Assessment Item 2 (placement performance).

Academic Integrity

Students are expected to engage in learning and assessment at QUT with honesty, transparency and fairness. Maintaining academic integrity means upholding these principles and demonstrating valuable professional capabilities based on ethical foundations.

Failure to maintain academic integrity can take many forms. It includes cheating in examinations, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, and submitting an assessment item completed by another person (e.g. contract cheating). It can also include providing your assessment to another entity, such as to a person or website.

You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.

Further details of QUT’s approach to academic integrity are outlined in the Academic integrity policy and the Student Code of Conduct. Breaching QUT’s Academic integrity policy is regarded as student misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.

Requirements to Study

Requirements

A blue card is required to complete this unit. A blue card confirms that you have passed a screening of your criminal history (the Working with Children Check) and have been approved to work with children and young people. For more information on the blue card and how to apply, visit the QUT website.

Blue Card

A blue card is required to complete this unit. A blue card confirms that you have passed a screening of your criminal history (the Working with Children Check) and have been approved to work with children and young people. For more information on the blue card and how to apply please visit the QUT website.

Resources

Resource Materials

Prescribed text(s)

Crisp, J., Douglas, C., Rebeiro, G., & Waters, D. (Eds.). (2021). Potter and Perry's Fundamentals of Nursing (5th ed.). Elsevier.

Med+Safe application (https://medsafe.com.au)

Rebeiro, G., Jack. L, Scully, N., & Wilson, D. (2020). Fundamentals of nursing clinical skills workbook (3rd ed.). Mosby, Elsevier.

Recommended text(s)

Brown, D., Edwards, H., Buckley, T. C. T., & Aitken, R. L. (2020). Lewis’s medical-surgical nursing: assessment and management of clinical problems (5e. Australia and New Zealand edition.). Elsevier.

Calleja, P., Theobald, K. & Harvey, T. (2024). Estes health assessment and physical examination (4th ed). Cengage Learning Australia.

Fraser, J., Waters, D., Forster, E., & Brown, N. (2017). Paediatric nursing in Australia : principles for practice (Second edition.). Cambridge University Press.

Levett-Jones, T. (2022). Clinical reasoning : learning to think like a nurse (T. Levett-Jones, Ed.; 3rd edition.). Pearson Australia a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd.

Levett-Jones, T., & Reid-Searl, K. (2022). The clinical placement : an essential guide for nursing students (5th edition.). Elsevier.

Risk Assessment Statement

During clinical work experience, you are exposed to a range of risks and hazards that are normally encountered by nurses practising in a variety of health care settings. When undertaking clinical work experience, you are automatically subject to the workplace health and safety policies, procedures, and regulations of the health care facility. You are required by law to comply with these policies and procedures at all times. To minimise risks in this unit, it is essential that you:

• participate in the health care facility orientation session
• act in accordance with organisational workplace health and safety policies
• are appropriately supervised by a registered nurse at all times
• undertake the required theoretical and practical preparation prior to commencement of the placement
• are aware of specific risks and hazards associated with the particular clinical area to which you have been assigned
• act within your scope of practice and the requirements of this unit
• maintain your personal health and immunisation status.

Standards/Competencies

This unit is designed to support your development of the following standards\competencies.

Registered Nurse Standards for Practice

1: Thinks critically and analyses nursing practice.

1. The RN accesses, analyses, and uses the best available evidence, that includes research findings, for safe, quality practice
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
2. The RN develops practice through reflection on experiences, knowledge, actions, feelings and beliefs to identify how these shape practice
   Relates to: Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
3. The RN respects all cultures and experiences, which includes responding to the role of family and community that underpin the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and people of other cultures
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
4. The RN complies with legislation, regulations, policies, guidelines and other standards or requirements relevant to the context of practice when making decisions
   Relates to: Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
5. The RN maintains accurate, comprehensive and timely documentation of assessments, planning, decision-making, actions and evaluations
   Relates to: Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.

4: Comprehensively conducts assessments.

1. The RN conducts assessments that are holistic as well as culturally appropriate
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
2. The RN uses a range of assessment techniques to systematically collect relevant and accurate information and data to inform practice
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
3. The RN works in partnership to determine factors that affect, or potentially affect, the health and wellbeing of people and populations to determine priorities for action and/ or for referral
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
4. The RN assesses the resources available to inform planning.
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.

5: Develops a plan for nursing practice.

1. The RN uses assessment data and best available evidence to develop a plan
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
2. The RN collaboratively constructs nursing practice plans until contingencies, options priorities, goals, actions, outcomes and timeframes are agreed with the relevant persons
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
3. The RN documents, evaluates and modifies plans accordingly to facilitate the agreed outcomes
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
4. The RN plans and negotiates how practice will be evaluated and the time frame of engagement
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
5. The RN coordinates resources effectively and efficiently for planned actions.
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.

6: Provides safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing practice.

1. The RN provides comprehensive safe, quality practice to achieve agreed goals and outcomes that are responsive to the nursing needs of people
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
2. The RN practises within their scope of practice
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
3. The RN practises in accordance with relevant policies, guidelines, standards, regulations and legislation
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
4. The RN uses the appropriate processes to identify and report potential and actual risk related system issues and where practice may be below the expected standards.
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.

7: Evaluates outcomes to inform nursing practice.

1. The RN evaluates and monitors progress towards the expected goals and outcomes
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
2. The RN revises the plan based on the evaluation
   Relates to: Med+Safe
3. The RN determines, documents and communicates further priorities, goals and outcomes with the relevant persons.
   Relates to: Med+Safe

Course Learning Outcomes

NS42 Bachelor of Nursing

1. Apply scientific knowledge and skills from nursing and related disciplines to the provision of safe, person-centred, evidence-based nursing care across the lifespan
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
2. Apply critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and digital literacy skills to make evidence- based decisions and evaluate outcomes
   Relates to: Med+Safe , Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
3. Practice as an ethical, socially inclusive, and culturally safe practitioner, reflective of your professional nursing identity across a range of health service settings.
   Relates to: Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
4. Enact and sustain effective communication skills, therapeutic relationships, and professional capabilities to practice independently and in inter and intra professional teams, to ensure safe, person-centred care
   Relates to: Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.
5. Demonstrate developing socially informed leadership capabilities to achieve positive individual and community outcomes in dynamic healthcare contexts.
   Relates to: Placement performance – 3 weeks/120 hours of clinical placement.