Exploring communities of practice through public health walks for nurse education

摘要

Student nurses must develop skills in observation, communication and reflection as well as public health knowledge from their first year of training. This paper will explain an innovative method developed for students to collect their own findings on public health in urban areas. These areas are both rich in the history of old public health that informs the content of many traditional public health walks, but are also locations where new public health concerns about chronic disease are concentrated. The learning method explained in this paper enables students to collect their own data and write original work as first-year students. Examples of their findings will be given. This award winning innovative approach to learning is underpinned by an approach to looking at the urban environment developed in Paris in the 1960s: the Dérive.