Abstract
BackgroundIt is well known that patients’ involvement in health care students’ learning is essential and gives students opportunities to experience clinical reasoning and practice clinical skills when interacting with patients. Students encounter patients in different contexts throughout their education. However, looking across the research providing evidence about learning related to patient-student encounters reveals a lack of knowledge about the actual learning process that occurs in encounters between patients and students. The aim of this study was to explore patient-student encounters in relation to students’ learning in a patient-centered health-care setting.MethodsAn ethnographic approach was used to study the encounters between patients and students. The setting was a clinical education ward for nursing students at a university hospital with eight beds. The study included 10 observations with 11 students and 10 patients. The observer followed one or two students taking care of one patient. During the fieldwork observational and reflective notes were taken. After each observation follow-up interviews were conducted with each patient and student separately. Data were analyzed using an ethnographic approach.ResultsThe most striking results showed that patients took different approaches in the encounters with students. When the students managed to create a good atmosphere and a mutual relationship, the patients were active participants in the students’ learning. If the students did not manage to create a good atmosphere, the relationship became one-way and the patients were passive participants, letting the students practice on their bodies but without engaging in a dialogue with the students.ConclusionsPatient-student encounters, at a clinical education ward with a patient-centred pedagogical framework, can develop into either a learning relationship or an attending relationship. A learning relationship is based on a mutual relationship between patients and students resulting in patients actively participating in students’ learning and they both experience it as a joint action. An attending relationship is based on a one-way relationship between patients and students resulting in patients passively participating by letting students to practice on their bodies but without engaging in a learning dialogue with the students.
Highlights
It is well known that patients’ involvement in health care students’ learning is essential and gives students opportunities to experience clinical reasoning and practice clinical skills when interacting with patients
The theme Creating a good atmosphere describes relationship-building. The nature of this relationship depends on the interaction between students and patients and is illustrated in the themes Mutual relationship and One-way relationship
Good atmosphere and dialogue leads to a mutual relationship
Summary
It is well known that patients’ involvement in health care students’ learning is essential and gives students opportunities to experience clinical reasoning and practice clinical skills when interacting with patients. Looking across the research providing evidence about learning related to patient-student encounters reveals a lack of knowledge about the actual learning process that occurs in encounters between patients and students. Patients’ involvement in health care students’ education in clinical settings is often taken for granted. Since encounters with patients are common in many health-care professions, the intention is to provide knowledge about patients’ approaches to students’ learning in clinical practice, for nursing students, and more generally for students studying to become health-care professionals in different fields. Looking across the research on patient involvement in students’ clinical training reveals a lack of knowledge about the learning processes that occur in encounters between health-care students’ and patients in clinical settings
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