Introduction to Clinical Practice is the first nursing clinical that students will encounter in either the Practical or Associate Degree Nursing programs. The setting for this clinical is the long-term care environment and often where students will encounter clients who may take a numerous amount of medications. Nursing Pharmacology is taught in the first semester as well—–students will start with pharmacology and then move in to clinical once they have some information under their belts. As instructors, we strive to bring the “classroom into the clinical”! Last semester, I had the pleasure of taking over a Pharmacology classroom for a colleague while teaching the clinical associated with the pharmacology class. LIGHTS BULBS WENT OFF! I knew students were struggling with pharmacology in the clinical setting as well as the classroom setting; how could I remedy this? Well, let me tell you what I did!
While watching “Maleficent”, I decided to get my scrapbooking material out. I had BRIGHT colored paper, my circle cutters, AND GLITTER GLUE! Shiny object syndrome was in full affect for me. I tend to recall things better with color and shininess (is that a word?), so maybe my students would too! I began cutting multiple circles of many many different bright colors. I grabbed my marker and started writing medication names on those circles. Before I knew it, the glitter glue was on those circles as I traced the medication names with the glitter glue and my table was FULL of “pills”. Once they dried, I punched holes in the top and put a ring through them. I now had a “wheel of pills”. So you are probably wondering, “what in the world are you going to do with those things?” Well, let me tell you………………………………….
I carried this “wheel of pills” in my scrub pockets at clinical. Randomly throughout clinical, I would pull out the “Wheel of pills”, approach a student and ask them to “pick a pill”. I would then proceed to ask them to tell me what the medication was and what they know about that medication. At first, students were panicked. HOWEVER, eventually, the students started asking me to pull the “Wheel of pills” out and to ask them questions. Towards the end of clinical near the end of the semester with a Pharmacology FINAL exam looming over them, students would play games with the “Wheel of Pills”. It was great to see them accept this strategy so readily as was watching them bring that classroom learning into clinical AND clinical learning into the classroom! It has been a HUGE success and I will for sure continue with it!
