Title : Prospective acceptability of drama in nursing education: A focus group discussion study with nursing students
Abstract:
Nursing is both science and art. Therefore, recent advances in nursing education have designed the drama art activity, which can simulate clinical practice in drama with process-oriented and reflective experiences, to practice the scientific nursing care and improve the clinical competency. However, engagement of drama in nursing education is low. To address this engagement problem, this study explored nursing students’ prospective acceptability of drama in nursing education. including their perceptions, perceived effects, and underlying mechanisms of the effects. To achieve this aim, this study recruited nursing students without previous experiences on drama in nursing education, to discuss their views in the focus group discussion (OSF Pre-registration: https://osf.io/yrnj2/). To facilitate the focus group discussion, a workshop included a brief introduction of drama in nursing education (20 minutes), and a semi-structured focus group discussion (90 minutes). After the workshop, participants’ responses were and analysed with Thematic Analysis. Within 30 days after the discussion, identified themes and codes in the discussion were shared with participants, for verification and consensus from them. This study got the ethical approval from the University of Exeter (Application ID: 8559547). The workshop was scheduled to take place on two occasions. For the first session, participants had initially agreed to attend; however, none were able to join due to scheduling conflicts between their clinical practice and the workshop. Then, they proposed an alternative time. At the second session, 21 nursing students participated. In the discussion, participants perceived positive impacts of drama, including fun, self-awareness, and becoming professional. However, they perceived negative impacts of feeling difficult, feeling fake and sceptical attitudes, unwillingness, and vulnerability. They explained that these negative perceptions were raised from their insufficient clinical knowledge and their shyness. To reduce their uncomfortable feelings and engage them with drama, they proposed solutions, including three aspects of the drama design: (1) participation benefits (refreshments and counting simulation hours); (2) delivery protocol (conditional participation and appropriate scheduling); as well as (3) delivery competence (the small group design, authentic scenarios, an experienced facilitator in drama, and psychologically safe climate in drama). The process-related incident of organizing the workshop and their responses to drama in nursing education implicitly reflected nursing students’ desire to be placed at the centre of the design. This aligns with principles of person-centred care – being respect during participation, and engaging in activities meaningfully connected to person-centred clinical practice. Notably, the relatively low engagement in the initial workshop may itself reflect a lack of perceived person-centredness in the educational process. In conclusion, this study further explored nursing students’ perceptions of drama in nursing education, explained their low engagement with its feasible solutions. These findings suggest that person-centred care should not be taught solely as a professional standard, but modelled within nursing education itself. Educators must strive to create learning environments that reflect the same values of respect and responsiveness that we expect students to uphold in their future clinical practice.
