NSN911 Nursing Therapeutics 2: Acute and Community Care

Unit Outline: Semester 2 2024, Kelvin Grove, Internal

Overview

This unit is at the developing stage of the course and builds on preceding units. You are expected to draw on knowledge and skills gained in previous units to enhance your understanding of nursing practice and peoples’ experience of health and illness. Peoples’ experiences of the continuum of care in different contexts of health care are emphasised to highlight chronic and acute dimensions of illness using unfolding clinical cases. A thorough understanding of the NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Practice, National Health Priority Areas, and National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards is essential to nursing practice and will underpin success in this unit. This on-campus unit fosters further development of knowledge and skills that you will apply, critically analyse, and reflect on throughout their off-campus experiences.

Learning Outcomes

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

1. Apply and integrate knowledge of the key NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Nursing Practice, National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, and National Health Priority Areas to enable effective clinical reasoning in a range of situations that reflect the diversity of contemporary health care settings and challenges
2. Demonstrate structured clinical reasoning to review a range of health situations, recognise relevant evidence and data, determine priorities, and formulate plans and interventions in line with timeframes and agreed goals.
3. Apply knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology to support clinical reasoning and evaluate care to determine safe, evidence-based and person-centred care provision in a range of clinical situations across the life span
4. Apply knowledge and skills of health literacy and partnership to evaluate care plans to effectively communicate with and engage consumers and their families.

Content

Learning Approaches

This unit will use a blend of face-to-face and online activities to develop key knowledge and skills. You will participate and collaborate with peers in tutorials to explore a range of clinical situations and the related nurse role. Learning experiences provide opportunities to develop and practice your multimodal communication skills. In particular, you will further develop skills for collaborative practice and communication by working in small group activities in tutorials. You will also be encouraged to apply learning from concurrent and prior units of study.

Tutorials will provide opportunities for you to work with case studies and scenarios from across the lifespan to develop your skills for critical inquiry. These activities provide key experiential learning opportunities to enable you to apply knowledge and skills, and to evaluate and refine your thinking in preparation for off-campus clinical placement. You will use a structured framework to undertake critical reflection on your experiential learning. Use of the clinical reasoning cycle framework and key components: Assessment, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation (APIE) will underpin your critical inquiry across the range of learning activities.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

• Ongoing formative feedback via online quizzes, self-check exercises, peer feedback in tutorial groups and through individual or whole of class feedback in online discussions or comments in online communities
• Formal written or recorded feedback on both formative and summative assessment tasks Via Turnitin in addition to the grade on the Criterion Reference Assessment sheet.
• Feedback on your Assessment Task 1 will be received prior to the Examination.

Assessment

Overview

There are 3 summative assessments to be completed in this unit progressively building your conceptual and applied knowledge and practice. A quiz to ensure your understanding of disease concepts and treatments, application (and evaluation) of a case study followed by an examination of all disease conditions and care via conceptual tests in case studies.

Unit Grading Scheme

7- point scale

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Online quiz

The quiz will be multiple choice, assess your knowledge of content covered so far in the unit and will be completed online. 

Assessment: Care plan case study

In response to a given case situation, you will apply knowledge and skills to analyse, plan, and act, taking a person-centred approach in the provision of care. Planning and action will be evidence-based and will demonstrate an understanding of the time frame of engagement. You will evaluate ongoing care provision and modify plans in accordance with observations and outcomes.

This is an assignment for the purposes of an extension.

Assessment: Short answer and case study exam

A centrally timetabled, written examination involving case studies and short answer questions.

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.

Resources

Resource Materials

Prescribed text(s)

Brown, D., Edwards, H., Buckley, T.  Aiken, R. (Eds.). (2024). Lewis's medical-surgical nursing: Assessment and management of clinical problems (6th ed.). Elsevier.

Recommended text(s)

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

Fraser, J., Brown, D., Forster, E., & Brown, N. (2024). Paediatric nursing in Australia: Principles for practice (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Risk Assessment Statement

If you are distressed by issues explored in the content of this unit you should approach staff or consult the university counselling service. You will be made aware of evacuation procedures and assembly areas in the first few lectures. In the event of a fire alarm sounding, or on a lecturer's instruction, you should leave the room and assemble in the designated area which will be indicated to you. You should be conscious of your health and safety at all times while on campus. You can obtain more information on health and safety from http://www.hse.qut.edu.au/.

Course Learning Outcomes

NS89 Master of Nursing - Entry to Practice

1. Analyse and apply scientific knowledge and skills in context of nursing and related disciplines to the provision of holistic, person-centred, evidence-based nursing across the life span
   Relates to: Online quiz, Care plan case study, Short answer and case study exam
2. Evaluate practice outcomes drawing upon critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills to examine person-centred nursing care and make evidence-based decisions
   Relates to: Online quiz, Care plan case study, Short answer and case study exam
3. Demonstrate research skills and use of contemporary evidence to justify clinical decisions and inform nursing practice
   Relates to: Care plan case study