Service user involvement in teaching and learning: student nurse perspectives

Abstract

Background: Service user involvement (SUI) in educating healthcare professionals in higher education can help student nurses develop a compassionate approach to care practice. This article explains one university's initiative, the Patient as Coach Team (PaCT), and presents evaluation results from phase 1. The PaCT strategy involved a service user led session and with student nurses, in small groups, sharing experiences of care from a service user perspective. Aim: To evaluate nursing students' views of the PaCT session, involving service users in their teaching and learning. Design: Survey. Method: Structured questionnaires with a free text box were completed by student nurses (n=321). Structured question responses were analysed manually and free text data thematically. Data collection took place from June 2016-June 2017. Results: There were very positive responses to the survey questions, with students perceiving a positive impact on their learning. Five themes emerged from the students' free text responses: 'Usefulness of the session', 'Seeing patients' perspectives', 'Inspiring and motivating session', 'Good discussions with patient coach', and 'overall views about the PaCT session'. Conclusion: The PaCT session provides a valid learning strategy utilising coaching as a technique to enable student nurses to learn from service users' experiences and perspectives of care. In addition, it contributes to students' reflective practice about their individual professional practice in care settings.

Methods for involvement of patients, public and users in academic nursing education: A scoping review

“…In some studies, the term Expert by experience 33,34 was used. In other studies, the following terms were used: patients, consumers, people with lived experiences, 30,36,46 real-life experiences, 39 user involvement in the classroom 42 or patient storytelling. 47 Nine of the 12 studies identified in this category refer to or arise from mental health nursing education.…”

“…Only three studies do not have this specific focus. 36,39,47 Two studies 32,40 briefly mention Experts by experience as a method, but included no further descriptions of how the method had been used in their studies.…”

“…Kuti and Houghton described how PaCT sessions were embedded into nursing education in which service users were invited to lead some workshop sessions. 39…”

“…This review identified 12 studies 30,33,34,36,37,39,41,42,44,[46][47][48] describing the use of service users representing different types of involvement within nursing education. The methods included classroom teaching, joint reflection, patient as coach team (PaCT), feedback and patients or service users talking about their experiences as a patient/user.…”

Service user involvement in an undergraduate nursing programme

“…Where storytelling, expert use of narratives, is employed for facilitation of learning, Grant et al (2012, suggest that students benefit from an enhanced understanding of the client experience, notwithstanding the critique that it can also be viewed as tohkenistic often and reflecting a power a l o f M e n t a l H e a l t h T r a i n i n g , E d u c a t i o n a n d P r a c t 5 imbalance between professionals (clinical and academic) and service users (Epstein 2015). The involvement of service users can be perceived as also adding credibility to the curricula and the learning experience (Happell and Bennetts 2016) and as suggests it also facilitates to be more aware of their current practice in informs their future practice (Ranjan 1992, cited Kuti andHoughton 2019) Given awareness of the above and previous positive feedback t The team decided to undertake a deeper different service module evaluation during the time that the unit was being delivered to explore in more depth how and why the SU input was viewed so positively in the current year.…”