While both time and days are dashing forward, new areas and experiences are being uncovered. While on most occasions most of us will have a smile that stretches widely across their face, on all occassions each experience is an opportunity to learning.
Team Building
Although we all might origin from different backgrounds, social activities organised help for team building. One may mention the meal we had at Kankaanpaa, which was an opportunity for us all to bond better with each other. As a matter of fact, as the days progressed a feeling of bond between each other could be felt, and it is only growing stronger.
As more hospitals are recruiting nurses from foreign countries, this approach of using social and leisure activities to build a strong bond between the team may be useful in a broader sense. This may also be used in local hospital were the majority of nurses would belong to the hospital's own country. Such approach, as adopted within this intensive course has been studied in hospitals. Social activities, according to a study by Kowalski et al. (2010), helps in reducing burnout and emotional stress. The same study also links to other studies which introduce the idea of 'Social Capital' whereby it has a focus on the idea of the wellbeing of staff members within an institution (Ref: Christoph Kowalski, Oliver Ommen, Elke Driller, Nicole Ernstmann, Markus A Wirtz, Thorsten Kohler and Holger Pfaff, (2010). Burnout in nurses - the relationship between social capital in hospitals and emotional exhaustion. Journal of Clinical Nursing 19, 1654-1663).
Digital Stories
During the past few years (although in Malta it happened quite recently), nursing and medical teaching methods have moved from the behaviourist approach to that of reflective practice. Many researchers seem to have found extended benefits with reflective practice, amongst them being Moon (2005), who describes reflection as being a tool to help the learner make sense of his experiences and develop an enhanced meaning and learning.
Reflective practice is contantly used, and with experience this may even become subconscious, however every nurse in practice should evaluate and reflect upon his or her own experiences and be able to accomodate new knowledge.
Digital story telling involves the creation of a story with the usage of multimedia tools, and may involve narration, writing, pictures, or videos with the aim of delivering a message and stimulate reflection. Barett (2006) considers digital story telling as a motivating strategy which makes reflection more visible, tangible and entertaining. Sanders (2008), offers a useful description of what digital stories should include.
The digital stories topics were handed to us, and as being group 2 myself, we immediately started to work. It did not take long before we started to plan on what should we include, and how to go about it, of course focussing at the end product, while liasing with the other groups for the final end product. Language, was a minor difficulty, however it seemed that as we felt more comfortable excellent ideas were starting to crop up, and as we shared these, we are as we speak on our way forward towards creating our own digital story, retrieving information, while communicating with each other. As a reflection upon this, it is my opinion that even though we are students, we can offer a product that is useful even for qualified nurses. This can furthur motivate us to seek relevant information while enhancing our end product. Furthermore digital stories and the ability to reflect and find information might be a step forward to make an individual think, and be able to learn himself, and transmit knowledge.
A sample of some digital stories can be found here:
Although these digital stories do not make use of video, the images used are effective, and the narration is short, concise and calm, which helps deliver a message. These digital stories all tell an event of some kind, however each of them is actually a reflection of an experience.
Ref:
Moon, (2004). Handbook of reflective and experiential learning, a: theory and practice. Routledge Falmer, Abingdon.
Barrett, (2006). Researching and evaluating digital storytelling as a deep learning tool. [Retrieved from: helenbarrett.com/portfolios/SITEStorytelling 2006.pdf].
Sanders, J. (2008). Twelve tips for using digital storytelling to promote reflective learning by medical students. Medical Teacher, 30, 774-777.
Glen I am really enjoying reading your blog, you have such a great balance between reflection and the use of evidence and what comes through particularly for me is that you are clearly identifying that learning is happening in all contexts during this IP, not just in the classroom, but in our everyday social and cultural activity.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to more posts :)