Digital Storytelling: Sharing Palliative Care Experiences as an Innovative Educational Approach

Abstract

When students are exposed to digital stories about a particular nursing field, they feel more prepared to practice in that field. The purpose of this innovative teaching project was to introduce undergraduate nursing students to palliative care nursing through digital storytelling. Digital interviews with experienced nurses from five specialties were compiled and shared with students. Student responses indicated a positive impact on their professional identity and greater awareness about palliative care. Students benefited from hearing about “real” experiences and exploring diverse specialties and reported that this activity helped decrease their fear, find beauty in death, and value nursing presence.

The Digital Story Teaching Method for Master of Nursing Specialist Students

“…The digital story teaching method brings the clinic into the classroom, integrating typicality, story, and vividness, and allowing students to enter the patient's world from the perspective of "I" in order to experience the situation of the characters in the story in an immersive way, and to know that the "clinical scene" is not just a patient lying in a hospital bed, but also includes his/her family, work, social relations, and friends, as well as various emotions around them, such as joy, sadness, hope, and worry. In the process of health assessment, through listening and communication, the humanistic concept of health was integrated into patient nursing practice, which can stimulate learners' ability to empathise and avoid the non-holistic nursing perspective of "seeing only trees but not forests" (Glassman and Lewis 2022). Through digital story teaching, teachers also realise that evaluation of students' learning should not only pay attention to students' understanding and mastery of knowledge and skills, but also the formation and development of their emotions and attitudes.…”