Nursing student as patient: experiential learning in a hospital simulation to improve empathy of nursing students.

BACKGROUND: Empathy is an important factor in the relation nurse-patient. To develop empathy in bachelor nursing students is a challenge in nursing education. There are several small experiential learning methods that develop empathy in nursing students, although not in a hospital simulation. By experiencing the role of a patient, nursing students would learn important aspects of empathy. AIM: This research will explore what nursing students learn about empathy in the relation nurse-patient, while they lie in bed as a patient seeing the nurse from another perspective. METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN: Qualitative descriptive study on 75 reflections of bachelor nursing students. RESULTS: Students experienced the need for empathy and were confronted with the patient's experiential world, being dependent, enduring hospital life and needing attention from the nurse. CONCLUSION: The change in perspective in the hospital simulation gives nursing students valuable insights in the importance of empathy in the relation patient-nurse. Four themes were identified: endurance, silent scream for attention, scary dependency and confrontation with the role of patient. Students learned about the possibilities and difficulties of empathy in different stages of the simulation. A hospital simulation is a useful and practical method to teach students empathy from the patients' perspective, on condition that there is a solid preparation for experiential learning.

[Evaluation by case managers dementia : An explorative practice based study on types and content]. / Evaluatie door casemanagers dementie : Een explorerende praktijkstudie naar vormen en inhoud.

BACKGROUND: This practice based explorative study aims to provide insight into the ways in which case managers shape and fill up the evaluation phase of their support of the informal care network of persons with dementia. METHOD: A combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. A group of 57 case managers of persons with dementia in three different organisational networks took part in this study. RESULTS: Results from the quantitative and qualitative data are organized into four themes: (1) attitude towards evaluation, (2) forms of evaluation, (3) implementation of evaluation and (4) content of evaluation. There are different ways in shaping evaluation and the content of it. The importance of interim and final evaluation is recognized, but is difficult to realize in a methodical way. Barriers experienced by the case managers include various factors associated both with clients as professionals. CONCLUSION: Case managers evaluate continuously and in an informal way to assess whether the extent of their assistance is meeting the needs of the client and informal network. Case managers do not use systematic evaluation to measure the quality of care they offer to persons with dementia and their caregivers. The findings demand a discussion on the level of clients, as well as on the professional and societal level about the way case managers should evaluate their support.