Classroom-Based Parent Interview in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing

Abstract

A classroom-based parent interview was designed and implemented in an undergraduate psychiatric mental health nursing class to fill the gap between nursing students and parents of child or adolescent patients with mental health issues faced during clinical. The goals of this learning activity were to increase understanding of what parents experience when dealing with their child’s mental health problems and to increase student engagement and attention. The class using this learning activity consisted of three parts: 1) an assigned pre-class reading; 2) a mini-lecture; and 3) a parent interview presentation. Students were pre-assigned a reading chapter and faculty-developed interview questions. During the mini-lecture, important knowledge related to mental health care of children was assessed using CourseKey software. After the mini-lecture, the parent guest speaker delivered her presentation about herself, her child’s strengths and abilities, her child’s mental health problems and their impact, and her family’s strengths based on the interview question prompts for about 30 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of a Q & A session. The set of interview questions was developed by faculty based on the competency questions of the Child Behavior Check List. Despite some limitations, this classroom-based parent interview using a flipped classroom model was found to be a meaningful learning strategy by increasing student engagement and attention, increasing retention of knowledge learned in class, and filling that gap in clinical.