Using film to enhance students' interest in public health nursing.

Public health nursing is a challenging course to teach. Most baccalaureate nursing (BSN) students enter nursing school with a vision of acute care nursing practice. In contrast, they often have little previous exposure to the nurse’s role in public health. When adult learners do not readily understand why content is important to their future career, it can be difficult to engage them in the learning process. This assignment uses films to capture students’ interest in public health so they can develop a framework for concepts in this area of nursing and explore the nurse’s role in this specialty. Films demonstrating specific nursing skills and patient encounters are an established component of nursing curricula. Feature films have also been successfully integrated into nursing courses. Hyde and Fife (2005) used the theory of constructivism to integrate feature films into a psychopathology nursing course. Parker and Faulk (2004) used Mezirow’s adult learning theory to guide them in the development of a feature film activity to engage RN-to-BSN students in a family systems course. This assignment uses an array of film resources outside of nursing and feature films to connect students to public health concepts.