Nurse educators continue to seek the most effective methods to teach psychomotor skills to nursing students. Effective skill performance can decrease costly medical errors and infections, thereby improving patient safety (Gonzalez & Sole, 2014; Taylor, 2012). Much of the recent research about skill acquisition involves simulation (Bowling, 2015; Cason et al., 2015) and deliberate practice (Oermann, Molloy, & Vaughn, 2015). In order to develop effective teaching methods, it is also important to understand students’ perceptions about how they learn nursing skills. Prior qualitative studies about skill acquisition have found common themes, including the importance of peers, the role of positive support and teaching, and the necessity of practicing skills on real people; however, in these studies technology did not emerge as a strong theme (Aldridge, 2017). The purpose of this presentation is to discuss findings from a phenomenological study conducted with nursing students about their perceptions of learning psychomotor skills including innovations of readily available technology to facilitate and enhance their learning and competency.
Methods:
Descriptive phenomenology was used. A purposive sample of nine senior nursing students was recruited from a small liberal arts university in the Southwest United States. Participants were interviewed using open-ended questions. Interviews were designed to examine and explore how nursing students describe the process of learning nursing skills. Six themes emerged from the voices of the students; however, this presentation will elaborate on three: “the umbrella of emotion,” “practice, practice, practice,” and “learning through technology.”
Results:
Student nurses experience an ever-present stream of emotions during the skills learning process. Emotions described ranged from anxiety and inadequacy to confidence, fear and worry to relief, confusion and uncertainty to a sense of accomplishment. Nursing students believed nursing skills were learned most effectively with repetitive practice several times in short sessions. They described barriers to practicing psychomotor skills outside scheduled lab times. These emotions and the need for frequent practice drove nursing students to develop innovative and efficient methods to learn skills. Nursing students’ stories revealed the significant role technology played in how they learned skills. Technology was viewed as superior to other sources of information, such as textbooks. Students incorporated innovative uses of readily available technology to enhance their skills learning. Nursing students used smart phones and webcams to create learning materials to practice skill development in settings outside the lab. Nursing students discussed their perceived limitations of professionally developed video learning materials. They preferred self-made videos of their clinical instructor demonstrating a skill in the lab setting. Nursing students used webcams at home when practicing for skills examinations by recording themselves performing a skill with subsequent self-evaluation of their performance. This was reported as an effective strategy to detect errors in their performance, such as omitting steps or contaminating the sterile field. In the clinical setting, nursing students used their smart phones to review skills videos, skills checklists, and search for relevant patient information online. The smart phone became their mobile source of information.
Conclusions and Policy Implications for Educators:
Results of this research showed nursing students report a wide range of emotions in their learning and competency development of psychomotor nursing skills. Nursing students are innovative and effortlessly use available technology to enhance their skill development and enhance opportunities for practice of new skills. Given the presence of technology in nursing schools around the world, these findings have implications for nurse educators. Nursing schools should develop policies around smartphone use in the clinical setting, including Internet use, confidentiality, and not taking pictures. There is also little evidence that smartphones are a vector for bacteria in the clinical setting (Mark et al., 2014).
Research about how nursing students use technology to learn nursing skills is extremely limited. Given the pervasive nature of technology among nursing students around the world, it is important for nurse educators to develop evidence about how to best use technology to teach nursing skills. This study provides initial evidence about how current students are using technology when learning nursing skills, and serves to guide future studies. Ultimately, teaching students how to perform skills well could make healthcare systems safer and decrease costs as errors and infections are prevented.