Using an interpretive research group to teach communication and understanding in undergraduate psychiatric-mental health nursing students.

(2004). Using an interpretive research group to teach communication and understanding in undergraduate psychiatric/mental health nursing students. Abstract: An interpretive research group based in existential phenomenology is used to facilitate student learning about skills central to nursing-communicating, listening, and a genuine understanding of "the other"-in an undergraduate psychiatric-mental health nursing course. Shattell and Hogan present a teaching strategy consistent with the Educative-Caring Model of nursing education in which student-faculty interactions are egalitarian and active learning is necessary. Article: An interpretive research group based in existential phenomenology is used to facilitate student learning about skills central to nursing-communicating, listening, and a genuine understanding of "the other"-in an undergraduate psychiatric-mental health nursing course. Students and faculty meet in small groups to analyze interview transcripts from ongoing research. This teaching strategy is consistent with the Educative-Caring Model of nursing education in which student-faculty interactions are egalitarian and active learning is necessary (Bevis & Watson, 1989). A goal of the interpretive research group learning activity is to facilitate the students' integration of theory and research into practice. For example: * Active learning strategy: Student and faculty participation in an interpretive research group * Theory: Existential phenomenology * Research: Data analysis in an interpretive research group. * Student practice: Students will "collect paradigm experiences, develop insights, see patterns, find meaning in ideas and experiences, [and] examine assumptions...with the moral ideal of the caring scholar-clinician" (Bevis & Watson, 1989, p. 277). Procedure A maximum of eight students and two faculty from the undergraduate psychiatric nursing course comprise the interpretive research group. A transcript from a faculty research project that has been approved by the Institutional Review Board is photocopied for each student. An overview of the research is provided. The process of analyzing meaning and themes from the interview is discussed. Each student signs a confidentiality pledge, witnessed by the faculty. Students are seated around a table with two readers in the middle (sitting across from one another) and one faculty member at each end. The first reader reads aloud the initial interview