Storytelling as a health education intervention for children and adolescents: A scoping review

Nurses play a central role in health education for children and adolescents, yet traditional didactic approaches often fail to engage young people, prompting growing interest in storytelling as an alternative option.

To examine the use of storytelling as a health education intervention in children and adolescents to inform nursing practice.

We searched CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, The Cochrane Library and Web of Science for randomised controlled trials involving children (4-18 years) receiving storytelling interventions for health education. Two authors independently screened the title and abstracts and full-papers, extracted the data and assessed the risk of bias for each study. Disagreements were resolved through consultation with the third author. Data were descriptively synthesised.

Twenty-four studies were included. Twelve studies measured knowledge, with the majority (n = 9, 75%) demonstrating significant gains in knowledge. Across the 19 studies which measured attitudes and behaviour, 89% (n = 17) demonstrated significant short-term benefits across a range of health topics, and of the seven studies which explored the impact on participants' level of anxiety, 71% (n = 5) demonstrated a significant reduction in procedural anxiety.

Storytelling interventions demonstrated improvements in health-related knowledge, short-term changes in attitudes and behaviour, and reduced procedural anxiety across a diverse range of health topics. Further research is needed to evaluate long-term outcomes and standardise outcome measures.

These findings support nurses in incorporating age-appropriate storytelling interventions into health education and procedural preparation to enhance understanding, engagement and short-term behaviour change in children and adolescents.