Supporting student nurse learning

What is it about?

Providing academic and pastoral support to nursing students is important not only for ensuring success and achievement in their studies, but also to provide an inclusive environment where students have a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. Such support is used extensively in other countries such as the United Kingdom, it is often not provided in some cases like Australia because of student cohort sizes and academic resistance to the pastoral role. The aim of this small-scale exploratory study was to evaluate the student’s perceptions of an inter-professional team approach to support nursing student learning. Nursing Tree Time was an academic pastoral support programme that encompassed a nursing academic, an academic skills advisor and a student welfare counsellor. For two hours per day over two thirteen-week semesters, a nursing academic was available in the campus library to provide support and advice for any undergraduate nursing student present. Additional support was provided from an academic skills advisor and a student counsellor. A fifteen item Likert scale with six open-ended questions was administered to a convenience sample of 38 nursing students who accessed Nursing Tree Time. The results demonstrate that 80% of students were highly in favour of this type of support, 60% of students made these sessions a priority and 73% of students felt these sessions influenced them continuing with their studies. Importantly, over 94% of students agreed that the collaborative approach and access and availability this type of input improved confidence and success. It is evident from these results that students felt there was an overwhelming need for continued academic pastoral support; however, this can prove challenging given the competing demands experienced by most nursing academics – research, teaching and governance responsibilities.

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Why is it important?

The provision of pastoral support is often challenging especially where the competing demands of research, teaching and governance makes the nursing academic inaccessible to students. This then means that other support mechanisms such as the academic skill advisors or friends and family take on the main role of academic and pastoral support. This creates a divide between nursing students and nursing academics, inasmuch that the academic is not best placed to offer professional role-modelling and suggests creates an environment of learning isolation.

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