Accessing Community through a Nursing Course: Evidence Based Practice

Back ground: Despite several initiatives taken communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis, measles, and polio remain the leading cause of mortality in developing countries but also severely affect both children and adults. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent them on mass scale by raising awareness among public by health care professionals.

Method: Nursing faculty in one of the private health institutions in Karachi Pakistan conceptualized, designed, and operationalized a course for students to address the issue of communicable diseases in general public within the course. One of the assessment strategies "Teaching Learning Aids Assignment" was designed in step by step approach that involved: community assessment; prioritization of problems; health awareness session planning; budgeting; session delivery; and the evaluation.

Results: The designed strategy was successful in engaging students in learning as well it served the dual purpose of health awareness in communities, especially among children, parents and teachers in school and community settings. The course also left a positive impact on some school policies and sensitized communities to take pertinent actions against communicable diseases.

Conclusion: The innovative nursing course helped the nursing students and nursing faculty to access communities in providing health awareness sessions during the course implementation and also provided opportunity for students to acquire skills of a health educator in health promotion and disease prevention. This teaching learning strategy also had positive impact on the community.