Writing activities and the hidden curriculum in nursing education

Pedagogical and teaching strategies used to teach writing to pre-licensure students enrolled in health professional programs: a scoping review protocol

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this review is to map the existing literature on pedagogical approaches and teaching strategies used to teach academic and professional writing to pre-licensure students who are enrolled in health professional programs.

INTRODUCTION

Health professional programs are intended to develop competence in both academic and professional writing. Effective academic writing skills prompt critical reflection and engagement with research communities, while professional writing skills are used to document interventions and communicate across health systems. Despite the importance of these 2 forms of writing, there are ongoing concerns that practitioners are entering practice without adequate writing skills. Given these concerns and the importance of writing across health disciplines, there is value in identifying the pedagogical strategies and approaches used in health professional programs to develop writing skills and to transfer such skills from one communicative context to another.

INCLUSION CRITERIA

This review will consider research on the pedagogical approaches and teaching strategies used to teach academic and professional writing in pre-licensure health professional programs.

METHODS

This review will be conducted in line with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. The search strategy will aim to locate published literature using MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase, CINAHL with Full-Text (EBSCOhost), ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health (ProQuest), and ERIC (EBSCOhost), along with gray literature (using databases/search engines). Papers published from 2010 onward in English and in French will be included. Extracted data will be reported in tabular format and presented narratively to address each review objective.

DETAILS OF THE REVIEW CAN BE FOUND IN OPEN SCIENCE FRAMEWORK

http://osf.io/9raxp.

Nursing teachers' job burnout and teaching ability: The mediating role of social support based on the Person-Context interaction theory

BACKGROUND

Great attention has been attached to the quality of nursing along with the development of medical treatment, which gives rise to the higher demand for colleges to cultivate high-quality nursing students, as well as the higher standard for teaching performance of the nursing faculty.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to investigate the effect of teachers' job burnout on teaching ability among nursing teachers in Chinese colleges and to examine the mediating role of social support in this relationship based on the Person-context interaction theory.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional descriptive design has been adopted.

METHODS

From February to June 2021, a total of 416 Chinese nursing teachers from 27 colleges filled out the questionnaires with a response rate of 97.42%. The questionnaire included general demographic questionnaire, teaching ability in nursing scale, teacher burnout scale and social support scale. The data were analyzed by SPSS26.0 statistical software in terms of Pearson's correlation the Structural Equation Model (SEM) was adopted to test the mediating effect of social support between job burnout and teaching ability in nursing of nursing teachers using Mplus 8.3.

RESULTS

Job burnout of nursing teachers was negatively and significantly correlated with the teaching ability in nursing and social support (p < 0.01). And Structural Equation Model results showed that social support mediated the relationship between teacher burnout and teaching ability in nursing.

CONCLUSIONS

Social support could help nursing teachers manage their job burnout, and eventually help them overcome the negative impact of teachers' job burnout on teaching ability in nursing. Social support could promote the teaching ability of nursing teachers by playing an intermediary role between them.[Box: see text].

Language as a proxy for race: Language and literacy and the nursing profession

Defining a nurse as literate is disciplinary and contextual, linked to professional identity formation, and an issue impacting patient safety. Literacy and language proficiency are concepts assessed through examining skills in four pillars: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This article explores how literacy is not only a practice issue but inextricably intertwined with issues of race, equity, diversity, and inclusiveness in our profession-both in regulatory policy and classroom pedagogy. In making the argument that language is a proxy for race, three cases of language and literacy will be presented. First, the deficit discourse of multilingual student struggle is stereotyped to the presence or absence of an accent, with multilingual student needs often treated homogeneously in disregard of population heterogenous abilities. Second, regulatory policies for language testing internationally educated nurses are discriminatory with testing context bearing little relationship to the language needs of nursing practice. Third, that the myth of "one standard English" results in racist evaluation practices of student academic performance. Recommendations are made for reframing how language and literacy are viewed in nursing education and regulation of practice with a focus on acknowledgment of one's personal relationship to racial issues and emphasizing the need for a change in mindset toward racialized multilingual students and writers.

Should the concepts chosen to guide concept-based curricula be threshold concepts?

In this paper we propose that the concepts guiding concept-based curricula should be threshold knowledge concepts. We briefly discuss some of the hurdles of current concept-based curricular designs and describe how the concepts themselves, paradoxically, might perpetuate the continued emphasis on content in nursing courses. Until now, threshold concept theory has not been part of the mainstream conversation about concept-based curricula. Threshold concepts act as portals to professional identity development and are recognized by their troublesome and transformative potential to enhance knowledge acquisition and change worldviews. This feature differentiates them from the core concepts often described within concept-based curriculum literature. The identification of threshold concepts in existing nursing courses might help structure curricular revision with the goal of enhancing transfer of learning and decreasing faculty resistance to the concept-based curricular approach.

Narrative photography with an expert patient as a method to improve empathy: a satisfaction study with health sciences students

OBJECTIVES

To assess health sciences students' satisfaction with narrative photography with an expert patient as an empathy-fostering teaching method.

METHODS

Nineteen students from a public medical sciences university in Barcelona (Spain) voluntarily completed six online training sessions using narrative photography and expert patient. Data were collected using an anonymous online satisfaction questionnaire verified by experts, including 29 quantitative and qualitative questions that were analyzed descriptively.

RESULTS

Eighteen valid questionnaires were obtained (90% response rate). All students evaluated the teaching method as highly satisfactory. The main positive aspects of the teaching method were being able to express one's emotions and reflections. Students felt the activity enhanced their empathy and helped them minimize their prejudices, specifically to patients living with HIV. Students also evaluated the online format as less optimal than if it were delivered in person.

CONCLUSION

The students found the teaching method to have a personal and professional impact, which facilitated the integration of empathy in their daily practice when caring for people living with HIV.

Reflective writing pedagogies in action: a qualitative systematic review

OBJECTIVES

Reflective practice is a core value of nursing education and emphasizes the self as a source of learning. Writing and reflection are often viewed as inseparable. The goal of this qualitative meta-study is to explore the mechanisms writing stimulates to promote learning transformation for nursing students in both clinical and classroom contexts.

METHODS

A literature search using the CINHAL, Medline, ERIC, and Academic Search Complete databases, using systematic methods, identified 26 papers and dissertations which gathered narrative data from nursing students in pre- and post-registration undergraduate courses.

RESULTS

Three themes were found describing: 1) Evolving through time and space to reflect; 2) Surfacing and absorbing; and 3) Trust, judgement, and social desirability in the feedback process.

CONCLUSIONS

Transformative learning is promoted through forming a bond with faculty during the writing process to normalize emotions, create critical self-awareness, and providing a safe, non-judgemental space to reflect on their practice and their learning.