title: Seeing is believing - reducing misconceptions about children's hospice care through effective teaching with undergraduate nursing students.
abstract: Children's palliative care has evolved in recent years and is now recognised as a distinct area of health and social care practice. Whilst children's hospices are viewed as central to quality care for these children and families, lack of knowledge regarding the exact nature of care they provide exists. Education can go part way to changing attitudes and knowledge about the key contribution of hospices, thus improving future care. Alternative and innovative strategies to stimulate meaningful learning are pivotal to children's nurse education and this paper examines one such innovation adopted with 2nd year children's nursing students. Aiming to help students explore the ethos of children's hospice an educational visit was arranged, followed by an on line discussion. Although some practical challenges were encountered, the visit heightened student awareness moving them from the readily held perception that children's hospices were exclusively for dying children and was viewed by students as more effective than a traditional classroom session.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queen's University Belfast, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT97BL Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. j.price@qub.a.uk
authors.forename: Jayne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Price
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dornan
authors.forename: Lorraine
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Quail
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D017051:Hospice Care; D006801:Humans; D009660:Northern Ireland; D010166:Palliative Care; D010371:Pediatric Nursing / Q000193:education*; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Children's nursing; Educational visits; Hospice; Undergraduate students