Objective: Individuals who work in the veterinary industry are at increased risk of poor mental health outcomes and suicide. Rates of serious psychological distress has been worsening amongst this population over recent years. Veterinarians and veterinary technicians are up to five times more likely to attempt suicide in comparison to the general public. There are limited data available on veterinary assistants and additional support staff that work in the industry. Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) is a suicide prevention training program shown to have both short-term and long-term benefits. QPR is offered for free to members of the American Veterinary Medical Association; however, there are no known studies looking at QPR’s effectiveness within the veterinary industry. The purpose of this project is to determine if QPR training is effective in increasing the knowledge surrounding suicide prevention so that individuals working in the veterinary industry are better equipped to identify and refer at-risk colleagues.
Methods: Participants completed a pretest, a QPR online education module, and a posttest. Descriptive statistics and a paired Wilcoxon signed rank test were used to analyze the results.
Results: QPR suicide prevention training resulted in an increase in score for all questions between the pre- and post-test, with seven out of nine having statistical significance.
Conclusions: QPR is a suicide prevention training that can be used to teach individuals who do not have a background in mental health how to recognize warning signs of suicide, interact with an individual who may be experiencing suicidal thoughts, and guide the individual to seek professional help. Increasing awareness and knowledge on the topic can help individuals within the veterinary industry identify at-risk colleagues, improve mental health outcomes, and reduce the number of suicides within the industry.

Background/Objective: The global nursing shortage is worsened by critical nursing faculty shortages that constrain educational capacity, resulting in thousands of qualified applications being rejected annually. Programs increasingly rely on clinically expert registered nurses (RNs) as part-time clinical nursing instructors (CNIs), who often transition to teaching with minimal pedagogical preparation. This gap between clinical expertise and educational competency affects instructor confidence, teaching effectiveness, and student outcomes. This qualitative case study aimed to describe RNs' experiences with an online Academic Clinical Nurse Educator Preparation Program (ACNEPP) and examine its influence on their transition from clinical experts to academic CNIs.
Methods: A single instrumental case study design employing the constructivist paradigm was utilized. Six RNs who completed the online ACNEPP within the previous three years and worked as CNIs were recruited through purposeful sampling. Data collection included semi-structured interviews, demographic questionnaires, and program material reviews. Reflexive Thematic Analysis guided data analysis, with Benner's novice-to-expert theory as the theoretical framework.
Results: Three main themes emerged: RN to CNI role transition challenges, online ACNEPP design effectiveness, and valuable program content. Participants experienced significant transition difficulties including inadequate institutional preparation, unclear role expectations, and insufficient mentorship support. The online program's asynchronous, self-paced design proved highly accessible for working nurses. Participants valued practical teaching tools, clinical teaching strategies, and pedagogical content that enhanced teaching practices, including improved debriefing techniques, structured feedback provision, and student orientation strategies.
Conclusions: This study illuminates the potential of structured online professional development in supporting the challenging transition from clinical expert to CNI. Findings support developing self-paced, flexible programs offering practical, immediately applicable content. Educational institutions must prioritize formal orientation programs, establish mentorship programs, and provide ongoing professional development which may enhance teaching quality, improve instructor confidence, increase retention rates, and ultimately expand nursing education capacity.

Introduction: There is a critical nursing shortage worldwide, and newly licensed registered nurses (NLRN) are needed to fill the gap. There is a consistent loss of 1/3 NLRN in the first year and 1/5 within the second-year post-graduation. This loss has been attributed to burnout, with NLRN leaving the workforce (job) or nursing field. The aim of this longitudinal survey study was to examine the potential relationship between burnout, perceived stress, and generalized health with intent to leave the workforce.
Methods: Surveys were administered from September 2023 to December 2024: baseline, graduation, 3-month, and 6-month post-graduation. Measures used were Maslach Burnout Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, Generalized Health Questionnaire-12, and intent to leave.
Results: Emotional exhaustion had a very strong direct correlation with depersonalization (.778) indicating the higher level of emotional exhaustion, the higher degree of depersonalization. Emotional exhaustion had a very strong direct correlation with perceived stress (.875), indicating the higher the perceived stress, the higher the degree of emotional exhaustion. Bachelor degree students showed higher levels of emotional exhaustion compared to associate degree students. Depersonalization had a moderately-strong correlation with thoughts of entering nursing, although 55% disagree about thoughts of leaving the nursing profession.
Conclusions: This study lays a crucial longitudinal foundation on burnout, perceived stress, generalized health, degree program, and intent to leave. This study showed a very strong correlation between emotional exhaustion-perceived stress, emotional exhaustion-depersonalization, with students in Bachelor degree programs showing higher levels of emotional exhaustion. However, more research is needed exploring degree program, burnout, perceived stress, and their impact on intent to leave.

Background and objective: This phenomenological inquiry explored the lived experience of acute care nurse leaders during the pandemic to better understand their experience of vulnerability as it contributes to enhancing the leadership curriculum in baccalaureate prelicensure nursing programs.
Methods: Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with eight nurse leaders using a Gadamerian, hermeneutic, phenomenological framework. Data analysis included researcher immersion, understanding, abstraction, synthesis/theme development and finally, illumination and illustration of the phenomena.
Results: Final analysis of the data revealed four interrelated major themes: Life Changing Experience/The Emergence of a New Unit Culture, Critical Leadership Functions for Supporting and Sustaining the Nursing Workforce, Managing Patient/Personal/Political and Professional Boundaries, and The Essentiality of C-Suite Contribution to Operations.
Conclusions: The study suggests a requirement to continue to train student nurses on core competencies of nurse leadership but encourages a shift from didactic and perhaps stagnant pedagogy to a more robust, participatory, experiential model and one that affords students leadership clinical placements and both role modeling and short-term mentorship experiences. This approach to student learning should include a competency-based model of instruction and assessment, utilization of experiential learning to help students apply theoretical knowledge to practice and student engagement in exercises in reflection towards developing self-awareness. Role modeling and mentorship opportunities should be prioritized. Suggestions for future research include exploring the application of this study’s findings to acute care setting new leader orientation programs and studies that measure the changes in leadership competence among nursing students after participating in the new curriculum.

Background: Due to the dwindling number of acute care facilities, and the rising number of patients requiring care, the healthcare arena is changing. Patients require care in the outpatient arena. Nursing academia needs to retool future caregivers to provide prelicensure outpatient clinical sites to resemble the changing healthcare landscape.
Results: Eight prelicensure nursing students (n = 8) were selected to have the majority of their clinical in the community. Clinical formats differed per course based on availability of clinical partner settings. This program was successful in graduating 7/8 students in the first cohort. Overall satisfaction was achieved in the first cohort leading to program continuation and increased student interest.
Conclusions: Although successful, challenges in operating this program remain relative to the clinical format, availability of clinical placements and student satisfaction.

The increasing proportion of older adults and the related increase in persons with chronic disease suggests increased attention to the training needs of nurses in care of the older adult. Research has shown that nurses are less knowledgeable about aging than other health care professionals. We propose that the nursing home offers an important training site for geriatric nursing and for care delivery in the sphere of supportive and rehabilitative care. Educational experiences offered through the Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative, an initiative to partner nursing homes and academic programs, funded by a collaboration of nonprofit foundations, explored the opportunities and factors that support or thwart successful clinical teaching. Factors included the nursing home environment, the faculty, and the interaction of faculty and nursing home staff. This manuscript outlines those findings along with a literature confirming the recommendations. In addition, we propose a collaborative model for success in an academic-service partnership.