A concept map is a graphic or pictorial arrangement of key concepts related to a patient’s care. By developing a concept map, students can visualize how signs and symptoms, problems, interventions, medications, and other aspects of a patient’s care relate to one another.
My experience with students is they need to be prompted to ensure they cover all aspects of their area of study. Placing the patient as the core focus, then asking the student to use prompts such (For example):
Physical - What is the condition, clinical signs, symptoms etc
Psychological - How does the condition impact on self concept
Social - How does the condition impact on the patient/family social interactions
Cultural - Do the cultural beliefs of the patient have an impact on any of the other prompts and how may clinical decisions be impacted by these beliefs
Professional - What potential clinical interventions could be made? What frames the decision making process? Are there any legal or ethical issues that need to be taken into account?
This approach seems to stop the student over focusing on one aspect and prompts a greater realization of the holistic impacts of the decision making process.
There was an article about this in the Dynamics Journal (journal for the Canadian Association of Critical Care Nurses) in 2009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20088357 is the link to the abstract
BCIT has been using it for years. You may want to contact Mary Gillespie and Eileen Shackell-Butt. (authors of the study)Their contact info is on the BCIT website.
I teach students in the second semester of their first year in a BSN program. They are taught concept mapping principles in the previous class and my co-teacher and I use them in several ways. First to help them comprehend and understand the knowledge they need for the concepts that we cover such as pain management, oxygenation, mobility, infection.
We also use it in a novel way--we ask students to use Christine Tanner's article (2006) that posits clinical reasoning as, "Thinking Like a Nurse". Using her proposed structure for clinical reasoning, we ask students to use the concept mapping process to identify where they view their ability to 'Think Like a Nurse". We repeat the process at the end of the course. This time we ask them to evaluate what growth they have seen in their critical thinking. The reflection papers are amazing. Often students find this process to be one of the most incredible experiences in the entire semester.
We have taken these ideas further and we are framing our entire course on this model. Traditionally this course was often the 'weeding out' course where students would determine they did not like nursing or they would fail the course. For the third year, we have experienced very low failure rates and very low attrition rates in our course. We have found that the students appreciate the framework because it gives them a focus for all their hard work. It seems to capture their imagination as they all have visions of what it will be like when they become a nurse.
Concept maps a necessary component of DNP students' written scholarly project.
Since I don't have any experience in teaching concept mapping. I would appreciate any suggestions you may be able to offer.
Concepts maps have been incorporated into our clinical experiences. They are a great tool for helping "connect the dots" of the patient. They are a great tool for the visual learner, as well. I have found it takes some time for the students and faculty to learn how to use them effectively. We are still working on this. Yet, I feel we have made some significant advancements. I agree with Stephen Gough (Birmingham City University), that the students need some prompts to know what type of information they need to have in order to try and connect the information in better ways to get a better understanding of the patient and the patient's condition and plan. So, we give the students a list of suggested and necessary information that must be included in the map, in order to help facilitate their connections: age, gender, admit diagnosis/chief complaint, past m/s history, current meds, stick figure to draw a picture of the patient as dictated by their assessment, shift care plan, etc. This seems to help them understand what is expected and work with the information better.
In my 25 years of teaching experiences the best teaching method for me is conceptual teaching using concept map. List the concepts and connect the concepts with lines or arrows that show the relationships of concepts and tell how and why the relationship exist in the map. Attached is a sample concept map. Hope it helps. I can share with you other concept maps in MCN and selected concepts in MSN
hi
i found an interesting article on concept mapping in nursing education. hope it helps
I like using concept mapping because it can illustrate how the lecture is going on
that is why i'm asking for a favor if you have article related to medication & IV therapy please attache it
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