Effectiveness of narrative pedagogy in developing student nurses' advocacy role

Background: The literature and research on nursing ethics and advocacy has shown that generally very few nurses and other clinicians will speak up about an issue they have witnessed regarding a patient advocacy concern and that often advocacy in nursing is not learned until after students have graduated and begun working.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of narrative pedagogy on the development of advocacy in student nurses, as measured by the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale.

Design: We tested the hypothesis that use of a narrative pedagogy assignment related to ethics would improve student nurse's perception of their advocacy role as measured by the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale using a quasi-experimental nonrandomized study using a pre-test, intervention, post-test design. Data collection occurred during class time from October 2012 to December 2012. The Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale tool was administered to students in class to assess their baseline and was administered again at the completion of the educational intervention to assess whether narrative pedagogy was effective in developing the nursing student's perception of their role as a patient advocate.

Ethical considerations: Students were informed that their participation was voluntary and that the data collected would be anonymous and confidential. The survey was not a graded assignment, and students did not receive any incentive to participate. The institutional review board of the college determined the study to be exempt from review.

Setting: School of Nursing at a small liberal arts college in the Northeastern United States.

Participants: A consecutive, nonprobability sample of 44 senior-level nursing students enrolled in their final nursing semester was utilized.

Findings: Results indicated significant differences in student nurse's perception of their advocacy role related to environment and educational influences following an education intervention using an ethics digital story.

Conclusion: Using the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale, we were able to measure the effectiveness of narrative pedagogy on nursing student's perception of the nurse's advocacy role.