title: Compassionate Care: Student nurses' learning through reflection and the use of story.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Current concern in health care about delivering care that is compassionate has important implications for how compassion is taught and made explicit in nurse education curricula. This paper will describe the use of stories within the curricula to enhance knowledge and skills in compassionate caring.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Leadership in Compassionate Care Programme (LCCP) was a 3-year action research project that sought to capture what compassionate care means within practice and utilise this learning within education. Stories gathered within clinical practice were used to stimulate reflective learning as part of a nursing module that teaches recognition of acute illness and deterioration at Edinburgh Napier University. Students listened to stories which included experiences of staff, students, patients and relatives and related these to their own experiences in practice. In this paper, examples from the online discussions are discussed with reference to one of six themes that emerged from the LCCP, that of caring conversations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The discussions suggest that reflective learning and the use of stories about the experience of giving and receiving care can contribute to the development of the knowledge, skill and confidence that enable student nurses to provide compassionate relationship centred care within practice.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Reflective learning can be a valuable strategy for students to ponder new knowledge and allow predetermined ideas to be challenged. Stories can initiate this process and help student nurses to understand not only the needs of others, but their own expectations and values, which in turn can inform how they plan and deliver person centred compassionate care.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing Midwifery and Social Care, Edinburgh Napier University, Sighthill Campus, Sighthill Court, Edinburgh, UK. Electronic address: l.adamson@napier.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Adamson
authors.affiliation: Institute of Care and Practice Improvement, University of West of Scotland, Faculty of Health Education and Social Sciences, School of Health, Nursing and Midwifery, Caird Building, Hamilton Campus, Almada Street, Hamilton ML3 OBA, UK. Electronic address: belinda.dewar@uws.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Belinda
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dewar
mesh_terms: D004506:Education, Nursing; D004645:Empathy; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D033262:Narration; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D012606:Scotland; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Compassion; Education; Person centred care; Reflection; Relationships; Stories; Student nurses; Theory practice gap