Teaching family planning to nurse and midwife students: A constructivist grounded theory study.

AIM: This study aimed to describe nurse/midwife educators' understanding and enactment of teaching family planning methods with nursing/midwifery students in educational programs in Rwanda. More precisely, the aim of this study was to generate a substantive theory that explains how nurse/midwife educators introduce family planning methods into their teaching practice to facilitate learning among nurse/midwife students in Rwanda. BACKGROUND: High maternal mortality remains a global health issue. In 2017, approximately 295,000 women worldwide died from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth and 94% of these maternal deaths occurred in low-income countries. Evidence shows that family planning improves maternal health outcomes and significantly contributes to reducing maternal mortality. Low family planning uptake is partly attributed to inadequate education of healthcare providers to provide family planning services. DESIGN: This study followed the constructivist grounded theory methodology articulated by Kathy Charmaz (2006; 2014). METHODS: The primary data source was individual semi-structured interviews with 25 nurse/midwife educators recruited from all the schools/faculties/departments of nursing and midwifery in Rwanda, augmented with written documents related to family planning education in nursing/midwifery preservice programs. RESULTS: The substantive Theory that emerged from the data analysis indicated that the process of teaching family planning in preservice nursing/midwifery education among nurse/midwife educators has three phases: preparing, facilitating and evaluating. Factors that had an impact on the process and actions that nurse/midwife educators undertook to address the challenges related to those factors were identified. The main influential factors that had a significant impact on nurse/midwife educators' ability to teach family planning are contextual factors and personal factors related to the nurse/midwife educators. The contextual factors included the availability of resources, student-teacher ratio, number of students in clinical placements and the time allocated to the family planning unit. The personal factors related to the nurse/midwife educators included knowledge, skills, confidence, attitude, beliefs and moral values toward family planning methods. CONCLUSION: These study findings generated valuable knowledge that can guide the improvement of teaching family planning in preservice nursing/midwifery programs in Rwanda and other limited-resource countries and contexts. With the insights provided by this study, future research should investigate strategies to overcome highlighted barriers, increase nurse/midwife educators' expertise in teaching family planning and enhance the preparedness of nurse/midwife students on some family planning methods identified in this study.

The lived experience of anxiety among late adolescents during high school: an interpretive phenomenological inquiry.

PURPOSE: To gain an understanding of everyday anxiety among late adolescents during high school. DESIGN: An interpretive phenomenological approach was utilized. A purposive sample of eight males and females in late adolescence with everyday anxiety were interviewed. METHOD: Individual interviews were conducted. Data analysis was undertaken throughout the research study by utilizing a thematic analysis of text in which themes emerged to understand the lived experience of everyday anxiety among late adolescents during high school. FINDINGS: The study revealed themes reflective of the lived body in time and space and in relation with others. The three themes were (a) the embodied experience of anxiety with the subtheme of the body and mind responds; (b) feeling uncomfortable in the lived space of school with the subthemes of the lived relations of bullying, the internal/external space of isolation, and the constant pressure to perform well; and (c) life at home with the subthemes of the lived space of home, the lived relations of pressure from parents, and life will get better. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses need to provide holistic care for late adolescents experiencing everyday anxiety by focusing on healing the whole person through the unity of body, mind, emotion, spirit, and environment.

The mandala: first-year undergraduate nursing students' learning experiences.

The mandala is a circular art form used by psychologists to access subconscious thought through symbolism and it has recently been adopted by nurse educators as a learning strategy for self-awareness. The lived experiences of six first-year undergraduate nursing students who completed a mandala assignment for emotional learning were explored using hermeneutic phenomenology. Participants experiences diverged from their original expectations that the mandala assignment would allow for a fun and free expression of 'self'. Participants did describe experiences of self-discovery; however, their experiences also resembled those associated with socialization in nursing education. Participants described both self-reflection and critical-reflection while completing the mandala assignment. Nurse educators and researchers can gain insight regarding the use of this assignment as an integrated transformative learning approach for emotional learning.