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Frightening frightened people: The place of nursing students’ stories of adversity in nurse education
Conference presentation   Open access

Frightening frightened people: The place of nursing students’ stories of adversity in nurse education

Julie Hanson and Margaret McAllister
Critical Perspectives in Nursing and Healthcare Conference, 2nd (Sydney, Australia, 31-Oct-2016–02-Nov-2016)
University of Sydney
2016
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http://sydney.edu.au/nursing/pdfs/critical-perspectives/hanson-mccallister-frightening-frightened-people.pdfView
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Abstract

Nursing Specialist Studies in Education workplace adversity healthcare culture curriculum immersive narratives authentic learning
For decades, the literature examining nursing students' preparation for practice reveals that dissonance between an idealised view of nursing and the realities of the workplace has been an enduring problem. More recently, healthcare culture has been identified as a key contributor to workplace tensions involving nursing students. An emerging body of literature reports that first clinical placement experience has been associated with heightened anxiety, fear and nervousness. These emotions are reported to impact negatively on student learning, performance, professional growth, and lead to increased attrition rates. Of concern is that if students are forewarned about adverse conditions and inhospitable environments that they may encounter in the workplace, it can be from sources outside of the university curriculum such as co-workers, friends or family. Some of these well-intentioned stories serve only to engender fear and do not include solutions. This paper describes a research study that collected stories of workplace adversity from seven nursing students using a critical incident questionnaire. Data were analysed using critical discourse analysis to examine the structures, relationships and processes underpinning the disclosed discursive events. The stories were converted into narratives by the researcher and re-presented to student participants in order to seek their perspectives on whether the story's message has a place in the curriculum. Students participants were also involved in co-creating lesson plans from their own stories that could be used to prepare future nursing students for adverse experiences on clinical placement. Finally, educators were asked to comment on the value and utility of the student-generated lesson plans. However, the creation of troubling student narratives raised some critical issues worthy of discussion, such as, the timing of when students should be prepared for workplace adversity, and the issue of "frightening frightened people"; how the stories might be embedded into the curriculum and the possible harm to students; the ability of educators to deal adequately with inter-professional issues of power and inequity; and where this preparation for practice should occur.

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