Faculty and student dialogue through journal writing

To explore how journal writing promotes and fosters an ongoing dialogue between students and faculty during an acute care pediatric clinical experience.

Unstructured, self-report data were collected via students' clinical journal entries and during a focus group interview. Content analysis was used to identified recurrent themes.

Two themes were generated: building a bond of trust and saving face.

The findings have implications for preceptors of nursing professionals. Implementing journal writing as a component to teaching-learning in the practice environment provides a means to recognize the affective outcomes of learning, such as increasing self-awareness and professional growth.