Students' voices: listening to their experiences in practice education

The experiences of the students in this pilot study demonstrate how students are learning to respond to the call of the patient amid the challenges of contemporary health care settings. Perhaps these experiences make teachers mindful of how students learn to respond, listen to, and know and connect with patients for whom they care. How would clinical courses be different if listening to and connecting with patients (as the basis for personalizing care) was given the same priority as completing particular interventions or demonstrating particular skills? What does it mean to students to encounter situations in which patients are not being listened to or in which nurses have not connected with patients? Research in nursing education is showing how new, student-centered pedagogies arise when teachers shift attention from content, and linking content to practice, to equally exploring narrative experiences and how students and teachers spend their time together (Diekelmann & Smythe, 2004). The voices of students gathered in this pilot study suggest that students are perhaps our brightest hope for envisioning what to preserve and what to overcome as we reform and create compelling, student-centered practice nursing education.