Integrating the Fundamentals of Care Framework Into Italian Nursing Education

Brief Summary

Detailed Description

Background and Significance: Since 2010, to fill the gap in what is essential when providing care in a complex and challenging environment, both for patients and nurses, a line of research has developed to study the fundamental of nursing care. The "Fundamentals of Care (FoC) Frameworks" defines FoC as fundamental activities for the patient, through which the patient feels at the centre of care and feels attention and respect around him. The framework outlines three dimensions necessary for delivering high-quality fundamental care: the nurse-patient relationship; addressing different fundamental needs; and a context that supports these goals. A positive and trusting nurse-patient relationship is the basis for delivering fundamental care and forms the core of the framework. FOCs are often implicit or invisible in nursing education, taught as an introductory part in the first year of the course and rarely addressed in subsequent years. The study aims to improve patient outcomes by educational interventions to integrate the FUNDAMENTAL OF CARE FRAMEWORK into nursing education. Objectives: The substantive objectives of the study are: 1) To describe how nurses, internship preceptors, students and patients and their families perceive fundamental care; 2) Assessing learning process in developing FOC skills of nursing students; 3) Assessing nursing students perception of the learning environment and the supervision related to learning of FOC skills during the clinical internship; 4) Assessing the perceived outcomes of patients and their families related to meet the fundamental care needs. Design: multi-centre randomized controlled trial Sample: Students of nursing degree enrolled in the first year of the course, internship preceptors nurses who work in the internship departments of students enrolled in the first year of nursing degree, and patients over the age of 18, cognitively intact, assisted in the internship departments, who have the following three needs: (1) nutrition; (2) elimination; (3) personal hygiene will be included. Measures: All outcomes will be measured with established criteria and with instruments used in previous studies or developed by the investigators and found validated and reliable. Analysis: In addition to descriptive statistics, statistical tests to analyze differences in the scores between groups will be used to address the objectives.

Primary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes

• perception of nursing students on the learning environment and supervision of FOC learning during the clinical internship(Immediately after the end of students' internship (approximately 10 months after the beginning of the study))
• Change of perception of fundamental of care by nurses, internship preceptors and students(perception of FoCs data will be collected at 3 time points: "baseline, before FoC framework training of trainers"; immediately after FoC framework training of trainers, immediately after the end of students' internship.)
• Change of perception of nursing students about how nursing student learn the fundamentals of care(Immediately after the end of students' theoretical, simulation and internship learning (complete FoC learning path). Approximately 10 months after the beginning of the study)
• perception of patients concerning to identification of fundamental needs and the responses received to these needs(During the students internship, at the end of hospitalization, immediately before discharge from the hospital (approximately 10 months after the beginning of the study))