Study difficulties in undergraduate nursing students—a British perspective

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to outline some of the basic issues, and their complex interrelationships, which affect learning in undergraduate nursing courses, student counsellors and administrators concerned with the selection of applicants. That students should learn to think and work independently through effective methods of study is an opinion expressed by Ruth Beard (1976) in terms of essential teaching objectives, and shared by most teachers engaged in higher education. However, such practising teachers might also agree that objectives are sometimes more easily stated than actually achieved! Sir James Mountford (1966) holds the view that university teaching and education “must necessarily provide the student with a body of positive knowledge which enhances his store of learning, and in part equips him for his career in later life . . .“. He expresses the priorities of such an education as inculcating in the student “an attitude of mind which regards the critical assessment of facts and values as more important than dogmas, and which holds that a grasp of underlying principles is more valuable than the accumulation of information or the acquisition of skills and techniques . . . above all-(students should) be able to work confidently on their own”. In a Bachelor of Nursing course, helping students to think and work independently via more effective methods of study is not without its problems. The nature and content of nursing is rooted in its own peculiar traditions that, to some extent, still resist independent thought and place considerable emphasis on “the acquisition of skills and techniques”. These distinct ritualized practices limit independent action, certainly in relation to “safe practices” (whatever these may be) where the margin of error must be negligible. While the nature and content of nursing, and perhaps the complexity of its academic-vocational curriculum, may place limitations on independent thought and action, a University level of education should provide the student not simply with the means of coping with the conflict that can arise, but with essential intellectual skills that substantiate the reasoned, innovative and adaptive professional behaviour ultimately required. These intellectual skills are essential in that they should facilitate both personal professional competence and progress of the profession.