Lisa's lessons: a case study of mental health teaching and learning

Impact of theory and clinical placement on undergraduate students' mental health nursing knowledge, skills, and attitudes

Mental health issues are common and contemporary nursing students need to be well prepared to meet the mental health care needs of Australians. This study explored the influence of the mental health component of a Bachelor of Nursing course on second-year undergraduate nursing students' self-reported knowledge, skills, and attitudes in relation to mental health nursing. The study used a quasiexperimental research design involving questionnaires and individual interviews to determine nursing students' self-reported knowledge, skills, attitudes. Questionnaires were administered prior to undertaking the mental health theory, repeated prior to undertaking a clinical placement in either a community or inpatient mental health setting, and again after the clinical placement. The findings of the study indicated that a positive clinical placement had the greatest influence on nursing students' self-reported knowledge, skills, and attitudes and interest in nursing people experiencing mental health problems; however, the quantity of theoretical education also emerged as an influencing variable.

The craft of teaching qualitative research: linking methodology to practice

Qualitative inquiry provides a means of apprehending the personal and contextual experiences of health and health care as well as the complex social, cultural and political issues that influence services and professional practice. Despite its usefulness in informing clinical practice, it is undervalued and under-utilised in contemporary nursing research. A number of organisational, ideological and educational reasons exist for this situation. This paper addresses educational issues, specifically teaching practice. We discuss craft knowledge, an important but often obscured practice, and its use in qualitative research education, drawing on the findings of a project that investigated a group of nursing academics' experiences and perceptions about teaching qualitative research. We argue that craft knowledge offers teachers a means to inspire and engage clinician students to learn not only the content and research skills required to do good qualitative research but to learn more about the standpoint and sensibilities of being qualitative researchers. In this way craft knowledge does two things. First it helps to move beyond the content versus process polemic that often dominates educational debate. Second, by enhancing the quality of educational experience, it potentially helps clinicians to value qualitative inquiry and thus defend and use it to inform clinical practice.

Principles for curriculum development in Australian nursing: an examination of the literature

The teaching and learning environment involves a complex interplay of various elements, each of which has been the subject of much educational research. This paper uses a framework for understanding these teaching and learning elements and provides a review of relevant literature. This critical review provided a foundation and focus for the development of a new bachelor of nursing program within a School of Nursing in a Queensland University.