Identifies factors that limit the effectiveness of pretests and posttests as evaluation methods and examines how they might influence obtained results. (JOW)

Discusses the increased recognition of the nurse practitioner role and emphasis on health care cost containment. Describes a clinical practice data collection tool that can be used in a variety of settings for evaluating nurse practitioner preparation. The instrument is included. (JOW)

Registered nurses returning to college need flexible options that meet learning needs while capitalizing on educational strengths. This article describes the rationale for the Guided Study Design and how it is implemented and evaluated. (JOW)

This article discusses death education and gives an example of an "adopted grandparents" program, where young children adopt the residents of a nursing home and learn about death through honest discussion of their experiences. (MS)

This paper suggests that in order to facilitate the management of substance abuse problems, schools of nursing should adopt written, comprehensive, and equitable substance abuse policies for students, faculty, and staff. Such policies should be based on the assumption that substance abuse is an illness that can be treated successfully and the…

Job task analyses provide a link between job performance and examination content. This paper describes a methodology that uses Item Response Theory to place job task analysis data on an equal interval scale that allows for quantitative comparisons between tasks and provides a method for quantifying a test blueprint. An actual analysis was…

As part of a course in Senior Nursing Practice in Community Health, ten senior nursing students were encouraged to explore the possibilities for practicing leadership skills by developing individual service projects. The program results exceeded all expectations. (AG)

The findings in this study have suggested that the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) might be discarded in favor of the Pre-Admission Classification Examination (PACE). (Author/NE)

Efforts toward extending the latest diagnostic and therapeutic modalities of health care from the tertiary care centers for professional health education, complex diagnosis and treatment, and research to the secondary health care centers are described. (KP)

Author describes an inservice program shared by 5 hospitals in southwestern Minnesota. (MB)

Describes a program instituted by the 3rd and 4th district of Minnesota Nurse's Association for those who develop and coordinate educational programs for their staff. (MB)

Focus in this article is on a taxonomy approach to mental retardation nursing but which could be developed for other clinical specialties as well. (Editor/MB)

Explores ways of presenting content and of fostering the grounding of the planned change process within the nurse's previous experience, value system, and personal characteristics. States that teaching strategies that combine experiential exercises with theory can make planned change meaningful and valuable to nurses. (NRJ)