Students' Perceptions of a Poem to Evaluate Learning: A Qualitative Study

How best to use poetry in nursing education remains uncertain. This study explored students' perceptions of incorporating a poem into a final examination to evaluate learning in an advanced physical assessment course.

Qualitative design and method were used to collect and analyze data retrieved from private interviews with seven graduate nursing students.

The themes were Being There, Think More, and Feeling Rushed. Students recommended the strategy as a measure of learning because it simulated a real patient encounter and made them think at a deeper level than other traditional approaches used to evaluating learning.

Poetry might engage nursing students in thinking critically and compassionately and be closer in touch with real-time nursing care than other traditionally used methods to evaluate nursing practice. More research is needed to validate poetry's best fit in nursing curricula. [J Nurs Educ. 2017;56(10):628-632.].