A Dedicated Education Unit for Maternal-Newborn Nursing Clinical Education

Designing a quality maternal-newborn clinical practice experience for undergraduate nursing students is often challenging. A dedicated education unit (DEU) is a partnership model of clinical education in which students partner with a designated unit-based nurse in providing nursing care within a typical patient care assignment. This article describes the experience of implementing a DEU in a junior level (third year) nursing practice course in a bachelor of science in nursing program curriculum. A DEU model is a perfect fit for maternal-newborn clinical learning experiences and provides a win-win outcome for academic and clinical partners as well as safe patient care. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nwh.2015.12.005