[ effect of employing synectic model in teaching palliative care in children on nursing students' writing creativity and academic performance]

Palliative care in patients with incurable diseases requires creativity in providing services in the best possible way. Therefore, the effect of Synectic model on students' writing creativity and academic performance was investigated in this study. It was a quasi-experimental study performed on 2 groups of nursing students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in the first semester of 2007-2008 academic year. The control group consisted of 28 and the experiment group included 32 students. After the written pre-test about the concept of children's palliative care, the synectic model was employed for the experiment group and the usual method for the control group. Then, the post-test was held for both groups and they also wrote an essay on palliative care. Data was analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive statistics and inferential tests including Mann Whitney, chi[2], and Fisher exact test. The mean for pre-test scores was 2.8 for the control group and 2.5 for the experiment group which showed no significant difference before the intervention. But after the intervention in post-test, the mean for the control group was 3.8, while it was 4.8 for the experiment group which showed a statistically significant difference. Moreover, investigating students' essay texts showed a significant difference between the two groups concerning creativity in writing. With regard to the results of this study, employing synectic method enhances academic performance and writing creativity of nursing students regarding children's palliative care