How does a nursing educator teach nursing students to comprehend the artistic nature of the nursing profession? Learning skills and mastering techniques is what captivates students’ attention when they first enter nursing school. Only after they have performed a few basic skills do students begin to understand the complexities of being a professional nurse. One technique for inspiring nursing students to reflect upon the caring experience with patients and families is to have them write a piece of poetry on the subject. This author gave junior nursing students an assignment in the clinical portion of their fundamentals course. Each student was given a copy of a poem written by an 11-year-old boy. The poem was about baseball, a subject he loved. The nursing students were then asked the following questions. What experiences have you had in clinical that have made you think you want to be a nurse? What is nursing to you? The students were given 2 weeks to reflect upon the following statement: Poetry is a way of expressing your emotions about a person, place or thing. To me nursing is poetry. (Finish the poem). No grade was given for this assignment. The purpose of the assignment was to get the students to reflect upon the artistic side of nursing. What follows is a collection of poems written by these students. None of the students were willing to read their poetry out loud in post-conference so the instructor collected the assignments. What was written was very captivating and demonstrated that the students took the assignment seriously. What follows is the collection of poems the students created and is entitled “Nursing is Poetry”.
Back to Creative Arts
Back to 37th Biennial Convention - Clinical Sessions
Sigma Theta Tau International