Abstract

Innovation in education in improving outcome

Unmona Borgohain Saikia

Innovation: “Innovation is anything that creates new resources, processes, or values or improves a company’s existing resources, processes or values”. 

In Nursing Education, the following Innovations can be used in improving outcome: 

1. Accept the individuality: Individuality is The particular or distinctive character of an individual; that quality, or aggregate of qualities, which distinguishes one person or thing from another. And individuality requires a concerted effort to know and account for the realities and the values of individual students. We must also learn to accept the traits and qualities that define the student's uniqueness – both the positive and the negative – because acceptance of these attributes ultimately translates into acceptance of students' worth, leading to a greater sense of wellbeing and internal balance. So we need to focus on their individual potentiality to glorify. 

2. Motivation: Motivation is a process that stimulates and energizes physical and mental activities toward a specific goal. Academic motivation is the driving force of academic studies and it is considered an effective factor that determines whether or not students complete their program at school or college. The importance of academic motivation lies with the fact that motivated students demonstrate more interest in dealing with learning activities and realizing achievements in educational environments. Lack of academic motivation in students leads to the deceleration of academic achievements. Since the nursing profession deals with people's lives, the loss of motivation might have a destructive effect on nursing care and indirectly on public health as well. As motivation and learning are deeply connected, hence we must put the effort to inspire and motivate students to achieve their goals. 

3. Empowering: Empowerment is defined as the interpersonal process of providing the proper tools, resources, and environment to build, develop and increase the ability and effectiveness of others to set and reach goals for individual and social ends. Supportive mentors play a pivotal role in the empowerment of nursing students and it is essential for the nursing profession that they are supported to undertake their mentorship role. The consequences of nursing student empowerment are high self-esteem, motivation for learning, and positive regard for placement.

4. Providing a conducive environment: To bring out better outcomes we must focus on providing a conducive environment for learning reality and also foster creative thinking and intellectual stimulation. 

5. Inculcating Reflective thinking process: Reflection allows nurses to explore clinical experiences and the thoughts and feelings associated with the experience, allowing for a change in beliefs and assumptions, emergence of new knowledge, and a transformation of clinical practice. This will help students to realize their core feelings and experience and help them to apply in the practical aspect. 

6. Streamlining the syllabus /curricula as per the need in the society or the emerging health care needs: Continuous curricular modifications are an essential phenomenon in nursing academia to level learning with the rapidly evolving professional practice. This can be done by updating with more evidence-based research and also evaluating the health needs or demands of the society from time to time. 

7. Evaluating Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. Emotional intelligence is very important in the development of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills of nursing students. To maintain nursing as science and art, these skills need to be gained within the process of nursing education. The evaluation system should not only be limited to formative and summative evaluation of curricula, there must be the provision of evaluating the emotional intelligence of the students and the faculties so that there will be better outcomes in nursing education. 

8. Teaching more nursing leadership skills: To achieve the expected outcome of the Nursing Education at the end of the course, we should teach and train the students more of nursing leadership skills from the first year of the nursing course. This can be achieved by the creation of a leadership development program and fostering leaders’ emotional intelligence.

9. Inter-professional collaboration: Inter-professional collaboration is defined as "when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients, families, caregivers, and communities to deliver the highest quality of care." Inter-professional collaboration fosters trust and respect between all healthcare providers and encourages the practice of treating nurses as equals with physicians. This can be accomplished by attending multidisciplinary rounds. As Health Care service is a collaborative approach it needs to focus on Interprofessional collaboration for more advanced skills and practice. 

10. Advance technology: We must take the help of advanced technology. It accelerates our service and expands our learning and experience. We must include computer-assisted thinking programs, video conferencing and web-based conference, e-learning, del e-learning. 

11. Latest Technology: Latest technology including high fidelity simulation should be incorporated into Nursing Education for better outcomes. Using high-fidelity simulation will stimulate critical thinking, practice decision-making, and problem-solving skills. This will indirectly bridge the gap between clinical teaching and the classroom setting.

Published Date: 2020-07-03; Received Date: 2020-05-12