Storytelling and professional learning

Case study by Ken

Storytelling and professional learning: A phenomenographic study of students' experience of patient digital stories in nurse education


Relevance

This study covers digital storytelling and its impact on the development of individuals and in turn its impact on patient centred practice.

We want to build on that case study by using digital stories to help develop specific key skills in clinical staff and non-clinical staff when it comes to the ethical treatment of prisoners/offenders coming into the hospital environment for treatment.

Situation

One of the problems facing healthcare today is providing personal care to patients that is both safe and effective. To help tackle this issue the development of an enhanced professional culture is needed. One powerful way to build this is through stories as a medium to transfer knowledge and experience from one individual to another. This way learners as Costello and Horne (2001) cited in Christiansen (2011) states “gains empathetic understanding, develop more effective interpersonal skills and promote practices that place patients at the centre of care”.

Task

The study focused on 20 individuals on a pre-reg nursing programme run in the UK and what effects digital stories had on them and their practice.

The goals of this study were to see how and what the individuals learnt when using them as a learning resource. As well as the teaching and learning strategies that are implemented, whether they enhanced the learning or hindered it.

Actions

  1. Develop the stories

  2. Gain ethical approval

  3. Select individuals for the study

  4. Give the digital stories to the individuals

  5. Collect data (interviews) from the individual

  6. Analyse the data

  7. Report on the finding.

Results

From the results of the case study, it was found that digital storytelling is an invaluable and valid teaching and learning tool that can move individuals out of their own sphere of knowledge and into a new sphere that can improve the learners own skills and knowledge as well as the patient’s own experience of the service. However, what was made apparent was that how much an individual can learn from it can vary between learners.

Reflections

By reading the study, it’s not just a case of building a digital story and releasing it to the “world”. There must be a level of emotional support for the learner themselves, so that the individuals are not distancing themselves from the stories but are engaging in it in order to learn from them.

There is also the need for clarification and the need to develop critical thinking in relation to what the digital story is teaching/showing. The concept of “bouncing ideas” off the learner’s own peers and colleagues to develop or reinforce knowledge and or skills is critical to maximise the learning experience.

Reference

Christiansen, A. (2011) ‘Storytelling and professional learning: A phenomenographic study of students' experience of patient digital stories in nurse education’, Nurse education today, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 289-293 [Online]. Available at https://pmt-eu.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=TN_cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_857132566&context=PC&vid=44OPN_VU1&lang=en_US&search_scope=EVERYTHING&adaptor=primo_central_multiple_fe&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,Storytelling%20and%20professional%20learning:%20A%20phenomenographic%20study%20of%20students%27%20experience%20of%20patient%20digital%20stories%20in%20nurse%20education (Accessed 28 May 2021).