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Background: Choirs are an important source of wellbeing for people experiencing palliative and end-of-life care. Threshold choirs are an innovation that could be more widely introduced, as hospital and palliative care settings have become more open to community input. Aims: Before such choirs are recommended and encouraged, evidence for their effectiveness and implementation barriers need to be known. Methods: A literature review was undertaken in 2019 and 2020 using CINAHL, PUBMED, Medline, ProQuest, Google Scholar and an internet manual search. Findings: The review identified a total of 26 research and discussion papers relevant to the topic of choir in palliative care settings. Conclusion: Following the review, guidelines were developed that may be useful to assist choirs and service providers to effectively introduce this valuable initiative. Choirs may be a creative, and uplifting arts-based activity to augment and enrich the culture of person-centred care during palliative care processes.

Clinical learning experiences are known to exacerbate nursing student anxiety, causing them to present to clinical placement in distressed, meaning anxious, states. Students already living with anxiety are also more likely to suffer setbacks at this time. Supervising Registered Nurses (RNs), in the clinical settings, struggle to support this student cohort. A professional development activity was designed to introduce RNs to higher education and nursing students' known mental health concerns (such as anxiety) and to arm them with strategies for working with distressed students. A research approach that enabled researchers to collaborate with participants was employed to design the intervention. A study evaluated the impact of the educational intervention with 45 Australian RN supervisors. Two tailed T-tests were chosen to explore the statistical difference between pre- and post-test mean results across the survey items. A 95% confidence interval was used. Statistical significance was set at0.05. The evaluation indicated the activity could be useful for improving supervising RNs' mental health literacy, thus enhancing their understanding of how to work with distressed students. Participants recommended the activity be offered to any staff supporting student clinical learning. Collaboration between nursing researchers and nursing clinical staff produced a meaningful professional development activity and motivated the participants to increase their mental health literacy and understanding of strategies to support distressed students. Future projects should adopt similar approaches that would support both RNs' ability to support students' during clinical learning and students in distress would also benefit.

Objectives Simulation debriefing skills are inadequate. Barriers to effective debriefing include a lack of understanding of the meaning of debriefing and time to learn necessary skills. In nursing, students have reported simulation debriefs are used for assessment purposes, with little opportunity or time for reflection, affecting their learning. This study reports on an intervention to support nursing simulation facilitators to develop and learn self-reflective learning skills to use when facilitating simulation debriefs. Design The authors designed and developed a six-hour workshop. The published simulation literature and Open Dialogue techniques informed the skill set included in the workshop. Open Dialogue is a therapeutic approach used in mental health care. Participants Twelve (N = 16, n = 12) female nurses who regularly facilitate simulations for nursing students were purposively recruited to the study. Methods This evaluation study utilised a modified version of a previously validated self-reported reflective learning questionnaire for participants to rate their experiences of the workshop. The modified questionnaire comprised 17 items across four subsets and utilised a five point Likert scale. Open-ended questions were also included. Results Eight questionnaires were returned. High scores indicated the participant's positive evaluation of the workshop in developing a skill set to promote self-reflective learning, together with analysing emotions in everyday professional situations and in communication skills. Conclusions Participants reported the intervention was beneficial to their professional development and in helping them to develop their own self-reflective learning skills. The skill set included in the workshop was helpful to nursing simulation facilitators and could be one way to enhance nursing simulation facilitators debriefing skill set.

The value of mentorship to professional development in nursing education has been consistently demonstrated in the literature. The benefits for mental health nursing are particularly noted for attracting nursing students and new graduates into this area of practice. The proliferation of online delivery of mental health nursing programs poses particular issues in providing mentorship to students. Despite changes to the mode of educational delivery, the mentorship literature primarily addresses face-to-face processes. The aim of this paper is to present a review of the literature pertaining to online mentorship. A literature search of the CinAHL, Medline, ProQuest and Google Scholar databases was undertaken to identify relevant literature. Hand searches of reference lists were also conducted. The findings demonstrate the paucity of literature addressing this topic. Evaluation of online mentorship programs are particularly scarce, small scale and usually conducted at one site only. Few descriptions of the content and structure are provided meaning that program development cannot benefit from existing knowledge and expertise. There is an urgent need for online mentorship accompanied by rigorous and systematic evaluation frameworks to maximize the benefits of mentorship to an online environment.

Current international research suggests universities providing nursing education should focus on shifting students' attitudes towards valuing clinical learning derived from aged care settings, offering support and education for aged care facility staff supervising nursing students' learning in the aged care setting, and encouraging nursing graduates to consider pursuing careers in gerontology nursing. Against this international backdrop, one Australian School of Nursing designed a structured clinical learning experience to offer final year nursing students an opportunity to further their knowledge and understanding of the complexities of the role of the gerontology registered nurse. Additionally, this clinical learning experience included provision for nursing academics to offer support and expertise to the aged care facility staff around the role of supervising and assessing final year nursing students' clinical learning. The aim of this paper is to present fifteen final year nursing students' and nine registered nurse supervisors' evaluations of the gerontology clinical learning experience and the success of the learning experience towards meeting the project aims. Mostly participants reported positive experiences and agreed the experience illuminated the role of the gerontology registered nurse. Participants in this study also provided suggestions about the benefits and barriers of the clinical learning experience.