ursing students' experiences of CBT in practice in psychiatric and mental health

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the educational value of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) experienced by undergraduate nursing students in practice in psychiatric and mental health under the guidance of a faculty member leading the practice, using students’ post­practice reports. This study aimed to link this information to the psychiatric nursing curriculum. Analysis of free­text data from 45 fourth­year undergraduate nursing students revealed associations between “patient,” “intervention” and “nursing,” and between “patient,” “together” and “creating,” and between “intervention,” “activity,” and “respectively.” For the analysis, simple tabulation was performed using KHcoder. After ascertaining the total number of extracted words in the descriptive data, forced extraction words were set and a co­occurrence network was constructed. The undergraduate nursing students were able to understand the relationship between nurses and patients by experiencing CBT in psychiatric nursing practice. They also recognized the importance of “working with the patient” and could capture the effects of interventions such as “increasing the patient's pleasant activity” as learning. In nursing education, where improvement of nursing skills is required, CBT in psychiatric nursing is a useful experience. To make CBT in clinical practice more effective for undergraduate nursing students, a curriculum should be developed that ensures learning time within lectures and exercises. Furthermore, a structured learning environment must be created for this practice.