Psychology is regarded as a crucial element of nursing undergraduate curricula, particularly in light of reports that highlight nurses’ alleged shortcomings in meeting the personal, moral and organisational challenges in their work place (Frances 2013). However, student nurses report that learning psychology is challenging due to overly theoretical syllabuses and ambiguous ‘facts’ that contrast with their need for unambiguous and practical information (Jansen and Nicholl 2007). First-year nursing students struggle to recognise the relevance and value of theoretical concepts such as psychology when they are overly concerned with familiarising themselves with nursing tasks rather than with topics that have little immediate application (Benner 2000). A challenge for lecturers is to engage students who have minimal exposure to practice and have little experience upon which to pin psychological knowledge (Fitzpatrick and McCarthy 2014; Quinn 2007).
In consideration of this, an educational strategy was developed aimed at enhancing students’ engagement with psychology, and which would encourage students to develop an awareness of patients’ psychological and social experiences by which to explore first-hand the lived experience of patients and inform empathetic, individualised and holistic care (Cummings and Bennet 2012). Although the use of digitally-facilitated storytelling is thought to have an ‘evolving role in nurse education’ (Haigh and Hardy 2011), there is little evaluation of psychology teaching methods in undergraduate nursing curriculums (de Vries and Timmins 2012). Accordingly this paper reports on the technical, pedagogical and administrative challenges of developing a ‘Talking Head’ or patient digital story. We discuss student and staff evaluations of the facility in relation to their understanding of the role psychology plays in the first year of the nursing undergraduate programme.
LITERATURE REVIEW
A key challenge for nurse educationalists is integrating theory with practice. An increasing number of texts illustrate the application of psychology to nursing; however, students may employ a narrow over-simplified application consistent with the example they have been exposed to (Goddard 2010; Jansen and Nicholl 2007; Meyhew 2000; Mulholland 1997). For learning and application to take place, psychology content should be relevant and meaningful with global application (Jansen and Nicholl 2007; Mowforth, Harrison, and Morris 2005). Case study scenarios are proposed as an effective method (Jansen and Nicholl 2007; Jordan 1998; Painter and Lemkau 1992). Nevertheless, a review of teaching methods to determine the effectiveness of one approach over another highlights that there is no one method that has a clear advantage (Thompson and Stapley 2011). Nonetheless, the use of service users in health education has gained momentum in recent years. The driver has emerged from two directions: first, UK governments’ proposal to include person-centred partnerships in health and social care; and second the emphasis on service user experience in educational standards for nursing (DOH 1998; NMC 2010). The contribution of service users in nurse education is thought to provide students with first-hand knowledge and meaningful perspectives by which to facilitate patient-centred care (Perry and Linsley 2006). Schwartz and Abbott (2007) proposed that patients’ stories led to a change of approach by students to the patients in their care and an improvement in the way that they sourced information about their patient. Rush reported that ‘Live’ service user-led sessions in mental health undergraduate education demonstrated transformative learning with all students reporting examples of actions or insights resulting from service user sessions. The main influences on learning were hearing the lived experience of the services users, the emotional impact of the condition, the reversal of roles (patient as teacher), reflection by the students and the training/preparation for service users (Rush 2008). Further research shows service user involvement in the design and implementation of educational sessions produces improvement in student knowledge around coping skills, communication and empathy, and promotes reflection in nursing students (Stickley et al. 2009). The benefits of storytelling itself include development of skills and imagination required to follow a narrative which may be complex, contradictory with multiple points of view: an ability to enter the storytellers’ reality and to understand how the story teller makes sense of that reality and to gain insight into the use of image and metaphor (Charon 2005).
In comparison, Morgan and Sanggaran (1997) concluded that service users’ opinions were not significant and Costello and Horne’s respondents felt they had learned little or nothing from service users in the classroom (Costello and Horne 2001). Garrett (2006) reported students showed various levels of engagement