Incorporating Clinical Experiences at a Community-Based Free Clinic to Improve Nursing Students’ Understanding of Rural, Medically Underserved Populations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14574/ojrnhc.v17i1.439Abstract
Schools of nursing have a responsibility to incorporate content related to social determinants of health and rural health into their curriculum and reinforce this content by providing nursing students with clinical experiences in which they can gain hands on experience providing care to rural residents. Free clinics provide a vital service to underserved, rural communities, but often remain an underutilized site for nursing clinical education. The partnership between a free clinic in west Alabama and one school of Nursing has demonstrated that students gain valuable insight not only into the health care needs of rural populations, but also the value of interprofessional collaboration to provide health services to this population. This clinical experience provided an avenue for students to meet their clinical objectives and serve a population of rural residents that were invested in their health but needed the services of this free clinic. Senior level BSN students in the Community Health Nursing course assigned to this clinical site reported an intention to serve rural, medically underserved populations after graduation.
Keywords: Rural populations, Nursing education, Medically underserved populations
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share (for non-commerical purposes) the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
