Using lived experience stories and anecdotes to enhance mental health nurse education

Abstract

Over the past few years, there has been a move towards incorporating ‘lived experience’ stories and anecdotes in the education of mental health nurses. This typically involves a service user sharing their experiences of their mental health condition, the care they have received and the effects this had on them. In this article, the authors propose that the use of lived experience stories about, and delivered by, nurse educators and healthcare professionals themselves can also be an important component of nurse education. Often nurse educators tend to use such stories and anecdotes in response to students’ requests for clarification or examples, but the authors suggest that there should be a shift towards using them as a foundation for their teaching sessions. This approach could support students to engage with the emotional, ethical and spiritual aspects of the issues being discussed, rather than focusing solely on the intellectual aspects.