Abstract: Teaching patients is part of the nursing profession and the objective of the European nursing degree education reforms in the early 2000s. Still, during their internship, student nurses are exposed to a diversity of curricula, different teachers, learning goals and teaching methods. The aim of the paper is to explore, how the Estonian student nurses have adopted the (patient)teaching paradigm. A qualitative study applied a hermeneutic approach. Thematic written interviews accompanied by a drawing task were collected from student nurses returning to school from their final internship. Data was analyzed using a content analysis. Analysis of the written answers and drawings show that the curriculum has been the main factor in the learning process in internalizing the new teaching paradigm. The internship, which challenged the students’ conceptions about teaching and the meanings that arose, was viewed in relation to motivator-hygiene theory. The success of the learning process seems to have required a ‘learning by doing’ teaching experience based on the new curriculum, to which each learner added the holistic context of individual intellectual contributions. In the context of Estonian curriculum reform, the student nurses can initiate changes related to clinical teaching and motivate nurse practitioners towards their professional development.
Keywords: nursing student; learning; (clinical)teaching; professional identity; qualitative design.
Title: The Meaning of Teaching - in the Clinical Practice of Estonian Student Nurses: Hermeneutic Research
Author: Kristel Kotkas, Larissa Jõgi, Anja Heikkinen
International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovations
ISSN 2348-1218 (print), ISSN 2348-1226 (online)
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