Teaching Family Health Care Using Pbl

Family health care is one of the core units offered in the undergraduate nursing program at Deakin University. The unit provides students the opportunity to explore the concept of family and the roles of the family in relation to health care needs. Simulated learning experiences using real life scenarios are offered to students, so they can explore and develop strategies designed to assist families to meet their health care needs. PBL is used as the teaching learning framework to encourage students exploring learning needs at their own pace. This paper will present the development, implementation and evaluation of the unit. A number of real life scenarios are used and incorporated into one scenario in order to achieve the learning outcome of the unit. The scenario unfolds each week to enable students to define their learning needs from the triggers and explore various management options for the family. A questionnaire is distributed to students to evaluate the unit as well as on-going staff evaluation throughout the semester and at the end of the semester.