“Bridging the Evidence” for Population Care

The amended emphasis on populations in the “Leadership,” “Practice Inquiry,” and “Health Care Delivery Systems” competencies of the 2012 NURSE PRACTITIONER CORE COMPETENCIES challenges the traditional educational programs for the preparation of the next generation of nurse practitioners. Expanding students’ view of their roles from individually-focused direct care service levels to addressing it across the continuum of service delivery system stretches faculty and students alike. It requires reviewing the program design and course content to bring relevance of population health to students’ clinical practice.

At the University, Healthy People 2020, the Community Guide, and the Institute of Medicine’s (2010) L.E.A.D. framework (Locate Evidence, Evaluate It, Assemble It, and Inform Decisions) combine with an unfolding case study that includes Internet-accessed data to guide students’ orientation from individually-focused direct care to a broader population-based delivery systems perspective. This has resulted in focused student group collaboration towards creating a richer geopolitical systems assessment. We attempt to “bridge the evidence” at the service systems levels of the Public Health Pyramid so that students are prepared to analyze the evidence through the L.E.A.D. framework.  

Beginning with a socio-ecological assessment and an analysis of the health-related statistics for the leading health indicators or any of the 42 Healthy People 2020 Objectives, students explore a geopolitical community of interest. Students are usually familiar with the Problem Intervention Comparison Outcome (PICO) approach to the evidenced-based decision-making process. Bridging students’ existing knowledge base to include the social determinants of population health and the complexity of issues at multiple delivery system level requires grappling with these real life issues. This is accomplished through student wiki teamwork leading to the development of a population-focused fact sheet shared with community agency partners to help “inform decisions” towards HP 2020 goals. Future patient provider practices will be set across greater multidisciplinary environments to address diverse population needs with broader system-level approaches. The L.E.A.D. process guides the student-provider exchange to translate the evidence-based research into clinical practice.