Developing clinical learning sites for undergraduate nursing students.

Abstract

As health care continues to evolve and take on new shapes, perioperative procedures more often are occurring in nonhospital settings and with fewer opportunities for nursing intervention. Believing that nursing education must prepare nurses at the undergraduate level to provide quality and meaningful perioperative care, nursing specialists and educators at Emory University, Atlanta, developed two new clinical learning sites that allow undergraduate nursing students to learn from preceptors in advanced perioperative roles. These learning sites encourage students to develop and use critical thinking skills that are imperative to perioperative care.