Kirsten Jack

‘Saying it without saying it’: using poetry as a way to talk about important issues in nursing practice:

The aim of this study was to explore the ways in which student nurses use self-authored poems to think about important aspects of nursing practice. Being a nurse can be rewarding in that it affords opportunities to care for and communicate with others. However, it can also yield challenges, and nurses are often faced with practice filled with uncertainty, grief and loss. Our findings suggest that students can use poetry writing to meaningfully explore nursing practice, engage with critical thinking and consider the feelings of others. Of particular note were the ways in which students use metaphor to explore emotional and relational aspects of practice and the technique of self-distancing when describing difficult and angering events. The work has implications for nurse education and practice. Proactively encouraging students to adopt particular ways of expressive writing might be beneficial for student health and wellbeing. Such an approach has the potential to improve quality care provision and support the emotional health of student nurses, which might lead to a reduction in compassion fatigue, stress and attrition.

Using poetry to explore difficult issues in children's nursing

Childrens nurses not only have to consider the needs of the infant but the needs of the parents. This case study reports on an innovative way of supporting nurses in developing relational skills. The activity developed empathy, self-awareness and concern for others.

A case for using both direct and indirect benchmarking to compare university performance metrics

ABSTRACT Benchmarking is used in higher education as a means to improve and compare performance. Comparative metric benchmarks may take two forms, based on direct standardization (DS) or indirect standardization (IS). DS can be used to measure variation in performance between institutions, controlling for intrinsic differences at each institution (e.g. controlling for differences in student typologies). IS can be used to measure variation in performance between institutions, compared to average performance overall. Typically, IS has been used to moderate educational output metrics, such as student qualification and satisfaction. We contrast the two approaches with an example dataset for three years of nursing student completion rates from nine institutions. Profiles of benchmarks and actual performance indicated that both approaches provide valuable and different perspectives to comparisons of institutional performance. We discuss the potential merits to stakeholders of each approach and conclude that decision-making can be best informed using both benchmark methods.

Developing advanced skills in practice teaching

No wonder you activities are, reading will be always needed. It is not only to fulfil the duties that you need to finish in deadline time. Reading will encourage your mind and thoughts. Of course, reading will greatly develop your experiences about everything. Reading developing advanced skills in practice teaching is also a way as one of the collective books that gives many advantages. The advantages are not only for you, but for the other peoples with those meaningful benefits.