Nursing and Biochemistry: An Evaluation Strategy Using a Basic Discipline to Present to Freshman Students Their Future Professional Environment

Abstract

Nursing is a career that involves more than taking care of sick patients, especially when working in health institutions (e . g. Clinics and Hospitals). According to the current curriculum guidelines for nurse graduation, it is necessary for this professional to develop different skills to work in several health care environments, including decision-making, communication, leadership, among others. Therefore, our objective was to plan a strategy to approximate Nursing freshmen students to their professional environment already in the very beginning of their graduate course. On that purpose we planned an evaluation strategy for the discipline Biochemistry using an active methodology to simulate a professional experience. Initially the students were divided into pairs, and had to analyze two different professional situations, both using Biochemical concepts. According to our results, as the evaluation strategy was applied, the students showed surprise and curiosity. The analysis of the questionnaire about the strategy revealed that most of the participants enjoyed the activity using positive words. Thus the strategy showed a good acceptance and presented the desired characteristic of correlating Biochemistry, a basic discipline, with the nurse professional skills. This strategy may allow they become more aware of their responsibilities sooner, as it allows using earlier their competence of seeking solutions to solve situations regarding the professional practices using biochemical basic concepts. This experience may improve them to a future better attendance of their patients.