Nurse Educators, Ulrica Pye, Brenda Whyatt, and Rebecca Newton

BScN year 3 students have traditionally been assigned, in-person, to community agencies in and around the Corner Brook area for their clinical placement for NURS 3500 Community Health Nursing Practice. During the pandemic, virtual access to community agencies outside of the Corner Brook area was explored.

Nurse Educators, Brenda Whyatt, Ulrica Pye and Rebecca Newton at Western Regional School of Nursing explored a different approach to accessing community agencies to give students more opportunities to put into practice the community program planning skills they learn in their community theory course and to increase collaborative efforts with more indigenous and rural and remote populations.

The 3rd year community health theory and practice courses are aligned to guide students to apply theory to practice. They learn how to conduct a needs assessment and design, plan, implement, and evaluate an intervention to address identified agency needs. Feedback was requested from the agencies and students to determine the impacts of virtual collaboration on the student learner outcomes, agency expectation and the overall clinical experience.

Agencies previously assigned students in-person confirmed that the virtual component did not negatively impact the process. New agencies had nothing to compare to however they reported that the whole process went smoothly. Inadvertently, some agencies reported becoming more effective in their day-to-day operations due to what they learned from students about virtual meetings. Student learner outcomes were met and students reported that they had positive experiences overall.

Virtual access to community agencies proved to be beneficial and enhanced the overall experience for both students and community agencies.