Curriculum development for nursing and assistive technology

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of curriculum innovation and development for nursing education and the inclusion of assistive technology as a subject for student nurses. The paper examines the nurses’ role as part of the interdisciplinary team in creating awareness and ensuring that people with disabilities are the focus of the assistive technology process. Nurses have the greatest contact with users of healthcare services, and are therefore in a key position to ensure that assistive technology contributes to addressing their needs. Curriculum development is the point of growth for all educational activities and a curriculum is the offering of socially valued knowledge, attitude or skill, made available to students during formal education. Contemporary nurse education needs to be relevant and flexible with curricula that will address the present and future health and social care needs of society. In Ireland nurse education has moved from a hospital to a university based programme and assistive technology has been included as an optional module in the nursing degree programme in Dublin City University.