The purpose of this presentation is to identify the national trends in student resilience as a factor in their overall well-being and academic engagement within undergraduate nursing education. Once established, it is the goal of this project to promote interdisciplinary collaboration among nursing students and social work students, as a model for teaching allied health profession how to work in partnership.
Methods:
Students completed guided reflections each day of the Study Abroad Immersion Experience in Greece during the Summer of 2018. The guided reflections included prompts with topic designations. Students were also required to write a preparatory journal 1 week prior to leaving for the trip and concluded the journaling experience one week after the trip ended. Students participated in a debriefing at the end of each clinical day to allow for discussion and self-reflection.
Results:
During the nurse education experience, students must understand how to learn, collaborate, and coexist with others in order to be prepared to work with fellow nurses and health care providers in their professional careers. There is a lack of knowledge within academia on how to foster such collaboration and often, a lack of student resilience hinders this process. Faculty across disciplines must be able to foster and support a healthy learning environment by educating and empowering their students for increased resilience and collaboration. Students reported an increased feeling of affirmation and self-awareness after completing the reflective journaling and mindfulness practices.
Conclusion:
Lack of resiliency among students negatively impacts the learning environment. Students who lack resilience often struggle with stress and coping skills, which unduly impacts their academic performance. This poor performance may result in failing grades, increasing drop-out rates, and more incidence of academic incivility. Unattended consequences of this may also include: diminished self-efficacy and an increased prevalence of stress, anxiety, and depression. The development of a self-care practice, which may include reflective journaling and mindfulness are examples of how to foster student resilience.