Teaching psychology to student nurses: the use of ‘Talking Head’ videos

Psychology is a central part of undergraduate nursing curricula in the UK. However, student nurses report difficulties recognising the relevance and value of psychology. We sought to strengthen first-year student nurses’ application of psychology by developing a set of digital stories based around ‘Talking Head’ video clips where authentic patients relate their experiences of illness and nursing care. The aim of this article is to discuss the technological, organisational and pedagogical challenges, student and staff evaluations and our recommendations for the future of Talking Heads. First-year student nurses were shown a video clip of a patient talking about their illness experiences followed by a group learning situation linking main themes to psychology and nursing. Students and staff valued the authenticity of patient's narrative, found the video clip easy to follow, reported a raised awareness of psychological concepts and improved empathetic understanding of chronic illness. Negative evaluations were related to a sanitised, untypical representation and limited internet access. This small-scale study highlighted how patient narrative may enhance students understanding of illness experience. It chronicles the development and evaluation of a Talking Head in a specific context but which may be useful across disciplines.

Supporting law students’ skills development online – a strategy to improve skills and reduce student stress?

Law students internationally suffer from a high level of psychological distress compared with the general and student populations, and anecdotal evidence suggests that students developing skills without adequate support experience significant stress and anxiety. This article considers an initiative at one Australian law school to develop a degree-wide structured online skills development programme as a means to both improve student skills acquisition and reduce student stress. The project implements, through the use of learning technology, the principles proposed by McKinney for making small changes to law school teaching, informed by self-efficacy theory, which can have powerful results.