Nurse Educators’ Pedagogical Approaches Addressing Student Nurses’ Mental Health Care Competence: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Nurses’ mental health care competence is vital for addressing the current mental health care crisis’ demand for quality in mental health care and services. These challenges also involve educational institutions. In the mental health course of the bachelor’s nursing curriculum, nurse educators face multiple tasks and challenges concerning preparing students for their clinical placement. This study aimed to explore and describe nurse educators’ pedagogical approaches across three universities. The study applied a qualitative and descriptive design, and data were collected from individual qualitative interviews with 13 experienced nurse educators. A content analysis approach in lines with Graneheim and Lundman was used to analyse the data. The content analysis resulted in one theme and three categories, and each category was characterised by three subcategories. The theme intentionally preparing student nurses for mental health care competence served as an overarching theme describing the educators’ overall reflections and descriptions. The three categories were: activating students for the mental health context; caring for students on a personal level; and supporting students in grasping the scope of nursing within the mental health context. These categories described the varieties and complexity of nurse educators’ pedagogical approaches addressing student nurses’ mental health care competence.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the nurse educators who participated in the study.

Authors’ contribution

All authors contributed to the study design, data analysis and manuscript preparation. The first author collected data. All authors have reviewed this final version and agreed upon it.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that influenced the work reported in this paper.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest, as the authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

Ethical approval

The Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) approved this study, project no 947246, with no additional approval required for ethical clearance.

Funding

The research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or non-profit sectors.