Pop culture in the classroom: Inspiring students to take action against intimate partner violence

Abstract

Working with families is fraught with complexity, including dealing with issues such as intimate partner violence. Faculty teaching within a family-newborn course with undergraduate nursing students sought innovative strategies to engage and support students to broach this difficult topic with families in acute care and community settings. Faculty noted that students in clinical experiences reported that nurses were not accurately assessing and consistently screening for intimate partner violence. However, assessing and screening for violence is part of the role of all nurses and falls within the standards of practice for community health nurses. The purpose of this presentation is to share several innovative teaching strategies undertaken by faculty working with undergraduate nursing students to explore and examine intimate partner violence.

Faculty employed teaching strategies integrating popular culture as a medium to explore intimate partner violence through relevant music videos and you tube clips. These strategies were followed by large group discussion surrounding the messages around gender and violence imbedded in the words and images shown. With the students engaged by the popular culture references, theory and evidence-based practice regarding assessment, screening, and intervention around intimate partner violence was offered. The foundation of these innovative teaching strategies is to invite undergraduate nursing students to: (1) examine their personal values, beliefs and assumptions around gender and violence; (2) consider the contexts for assessment and screening of families for intimate partner violence across community health nursing practice settings.

The key learning outcomes for this presentation are: 1) influencing undergraduate nursing students to situate their nursing practice in the context of their values, beliefs and assumptions 2) influencing nursing educators to consider innovative teaching strategies using popular culture to engage and inform undergraduate nursing students 3) inspiring the current and future generation of nurses to accurately assess and consistently screen for intimate partner violence across community health settings.

The target audience for this presentation includes: nursing educators, nursing students, and all public health and home health nurses curious about accurately assessing and screening for intimate partner violence across community health settings.

Subtheme: CHN Capacity: Innovations and technology to advance excellence in educational preparation and workforce development