What nursing students learn from the illness experiences of senior nurses: Class structure linking the experiences of those living with illness, excellent nursing practice, and research activities

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to clarify the structure of student learning. After conducting a class for second-year nursing students where active nurses shared their personal experiences of living with illness, two nurses discussed their nursing practices and research activities, helping to broaden the students’ perspectives.
Methods: Research participants are second-year nursing students from University A who attended this lecture and agreed in the study. After the completion of this lecture, students were instructed to prepare a report. The report assignment consisted of: things learned, thoughts, and feelings from the lecture. We analyzed the students’ report both qualitatively and inductively.
Results: The study included 71 participants, consisting of 66 women and 5 men, all aged between 19 and 20 years. Among these participants, 31.6% had personally battled an illness, and an equal percentage of 31.6% had a family member who had experienced illness. However, this was not limited to those who perceive the fact of being ill as a shock.A total of 421 codes were obtained from all the students’ reports, including the four types of assignments, and by abstracting these, 25 subcategories and 12 categories were obtained to represent students’ learning.
Conclusions: Students realized that as long as nurses faced patients sincerely, disciplined themselves, and continued to find ways to truly understand the patient, whether they have experienced living with an illness has no bearing on their nursing abilities. True care is without limitations. Additionally, they realized that research could be a powerful tool for supporting nursing practices.