Involving patients with coronary heart disease in developing e-learning assets for primary care nurses

Pitfalls, perils and payments: service user, carers and teaching staff perceptions of the barriers to involvement in nursing education

BACKGROUND

There is an impetus to involve service users and carers in the education of nurses and a general consensus in the literature about the benefits that this brings to all involved. Whilst these benefits are well rehearsed in the literature there is little written about the potential barriers to service user and carer involvement in nurse education.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to investigate service users, carers and staff views on the potential barriers to becoming engaged in nurse education.

DESIGN

A qualitative study using focus group discussions (FGD) was used to canvas the views of service users, carers and teaching staff.

SETTING

A large school of nursing in the North West of England.

PARTICIPANTS

38 service users and carers recruited from the North West of England and 23 nursing and midwifery teachers and lecturers.

METHODS

Focus group discussions were employed as the main data collection method. The data were analysed using thematic analysis.

RESULTS

Six themes occurred in the data as being negatively associated with potential and actual involvement: not knowing the context of the group, lack of preparation of the group, not being supported, not being allowed to be real, not receiving feedback, not being paid appropriately.

CONCLUSIONS

The process of involvement is not without difficulties. These data show that some consideration needs to be given to the potential barriers to involvement if the engagement of service users and carers is to be effective.

Involving people with learning disabilities in nurse education: towards an inclusive approach

There is limited evidence that explores how to effectively include people with learning disabilities in nurse education in the U.K. The majority of reported work relates to mental health nursing and social work training (Morgan and Jones, 2009). This paper specifically reports on the processes and activities undertaken by the authors with people with learning disabilities in the development of a new BSc learning disability nursing programme, a specific branch of nursing in the U.K. In doing so, findings and discussion from two separate projects involving students and people with learning disabilities will be integrated into the paper. EPICURE (Engagement, Processing, Interpretation, Critique, Usefulness, Relevance and Ethics (Stige et al. 2009) is adopted as a qualitative framework throughout the paper to evaluate the reported work that took place between September 2006 and October 2010. Suggestions are therefore made regarding the benefits and challenges of striving towards an inclusive approach to user involvement in nurse education, with particular reference to learning disability. The work presented in the paper demonstrates how through careful involvement of this population, deeper learning opportunities for all nursing students can be created.

Service user involvement in nurse education: a report on using online discussions with a service user to augment his digital story

Service user involvement is a key element within current pre- and post-registration nurse education in the U.K. but achieving this is challenging. Most service user involvement is through classroom visits. Digital stories, film and audio are alternatives but lack the interactivity and development of reflection that can be achieved through face-to-face contact. This report reviews the background to service user involvement in healthcare professional education then provides a reflective account of a novel initiative whereby a spinal-injured patient was involved in creating a digital story around some of his in-hospital experiences and then engaged in online discussions with post-registration nursing (degree) and practice educator (masters) students. These discussions provided a richer experience for the students enabling them to reflect more deeply on how nursing care is delivered and perceived by service users. The report concludes that digital stories can be used with repeated groups to inspire discussion and reflection. Augmenting such digital stories with online discussions with the service user whose story is told helps practitioners develop greater empathy, insight and understanding which are beneficial for improving service delivery and nursing care.