Schools of nursing recognize that the powerful story and the real-life experiences captured in 5B can serve as important teaching tool. Here’s a sampling of what some schools are doing to share this documentary and lessons learned with student nurses.
Endicott College School of Nursing Beverly, MA
The Student Nurses Association at Endicott College hosted a Student Movie Night featuring 5B near the start of the school’s fall 2021 semester. Those attending felt the movie was well done and an important moment to capture in our healthcare history. Many saw many parallels between caring for AIDS patients in the 1980s and treating those with COVID-19 today. Though attendees recognized progress with how the LGBTQ community is treated by health professionals, some remarked that politics and stigma still exist and can impede good health care. The documentary left nursing students think about their role in treating the whole patient and inspired by those how broke through barriers to bring about change. View Student Movie Night Flyer
Lakeland University, Nursing Program Plymouth, Wisconsin
In Spring 2020, faculty in the school’s RN to BSN completion program incorporated 5B into the Professional Nursing Practice course. A worksheet was developed for students to identify examples of care/compassion, resiliency, autonomy, critical thinking/resourcefulness, and leadership exhibited by the nurses who worked on 5B. Students also were asked to identify how these nurses inspired them and to correlate the documentary's themes to provisions within the Guide to the Code of Ethics for Nurses published by the American Nurses Association.
Rutgers University School of Nursing New Brunswick, New Jersey
When faced with the consequences of the pandemic and the need to develop remote clinical experiences for students, Dr. Barbara L. Cannella, the Assistant Dean for Entry into Baccalaureate Practice, moved to use 5B in her Leadership and Management course. After receiving permission to use the documentary, she developed a remote clinical experience for her clinical faculty to use with senior students. Dr. Cannella’s innovative work and the student response to this learning experience are detailed in Johnson & Johnson’s Nurses Leading Innovation Series in a story titled Inspiring Nurse Innovation and Leadership with Lessons from 5B
Thomas Jefferson University, Jefferson College of Nursing Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The documentary 5B is integrated into a leadership course in the school’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program. Students are asked to compare and contrast nursing leadership during the onset of HIV/AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Mary Lou Manning, who serves as the Director of Jefferson’s Center for Infection Control and Antibiotic Stewardship, describes this learning experience in a “Teaching Tip” published in the August 2020 issue of Nurse Educator titled Comparing the AIDS and COVID-19 Pandemics Using the 5B Documentary.
University of Memphis Loewenberg College of Nursing Memphis, TN
Dr. Brad Harrell, Assistant Dean of Nursing and Director of the MSN program, incorporated 5B into the Med-Surg 1 course for undergraduate students to help strengthen the content on caring for patients with HIV/AIDS. The professor used the documentary to expand the conversation to caring for sexual/gender minorities more broadly.
AACN is looking to spotlight nursing schools who are using 5B in their nursing programs as a teaching tool in new and creative ways. Please send details about what your school is doing to 5B@aacnnursing.org, and we will showcase your program in this tool kit.