Participation In Nurse Education: the Pine project
| Published date | 18 May 2009 |
| Date | 18 May 2009 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17556228200900003 |
| Pages | 11-18 |
| Author | Theodore Stickley,Brenda Rush,Rebecca Shaw,Angela Smith,Ronald Collier,Joan Cook,Torsten Shaw,David Gow,Anne Felton,Sharon Roberts |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
11
The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2009 © Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
Participation In Nurse Education: the
PINE project
Theodore Stickley, Brenda Rush, Rebecca Shaw, Angela Smith, Ronald Collier, Joan Cook, Torsten Shaw, David
Gow, Anne Felton and Sharon Roberts
Abstract
Service user involvement is called for at every
level of NHS delivery in the U nited Ki ngdom
(UK). This arti cle describes a model of service
user participation in the development of mental
health nurse curricula in a UK university. Using a
research model of participatory action research,
the Participation In Nurse Education (PINE) project
has now become mainstream in the mental health
branches at the university. Service users led the
design and implementation of the teaching sessions
and led the data collection and analysis. Research
participants were the service user trainers and the
student nurses who were involved in being taught
in the early stages of the project. The benefits
of the work to both trainers and students are
identified as well as some of the difficulties.
Key words
mental health nurse education; participatory action
research; service user involvement; student nurses
Introduction
This article describes a model of service user participation in
the development of mental health nurse curricula in a UK
university. Originally designed as a three-year participatory
action research project, the Participation In Nurse Education
(PINE) project has latterly become mainstream in assuring
the participation of service users in curricula design and
teaching undergraduate mental health nurses in a UK
university school of nursing. It was as long ago as 1994
in the review of mental health nursing, that models of
involvement of service users were called for (Department
of Health, 1994). While there has certainly been plenty of
activity to attempt meaningful involvement in the UK, there
has been little in terms of research evidence to support such
initiatives, especially those of a strategic nature.
The overarching methodology for t he project is
participatory action research (PAR) (Kemmis & McTaggart,
2000), utilising qualitative evaluation methods (Patton,
1997; Greene, 2000). PAR emphasises collaboration and
permits the researchers and the participants to work
together in partnership. This was a pivotal aspect of the
philosophy and practice of the project. Ethical approval
was obtained from the local ethics committee.
The PINE project was created as an action research
project to fully involve service users in both curricula
design and the development of teaching sessions that
were designed, written and delivered by service users
themselves. The tangible result of this project is the
existence of four teaching sessions regularly delivered to
undergraduate mental health nursing students across four
centres in a region of the East Midlands in the UK. The
development of the project has been a complex process
with cycles of evaluation by those who have participated
in the project. The design and implementation has taken
three years and important lessons have been learned, as
the model has been refined during this period. The project
is reported in four distinct phases, and in terms of the
participatory action research (PAR) process, each phase
was concluded by the evaluation of the phase by the
research steering group. The four phases were:
1. recruitment to the research group
2. development of the teaching materials
3. implementation
4. assessing the impact upon students and trainers.
Following a brief review of the relevant literature, these
four phases form the structure for the rest of this article
followed by a brief discussion and conclusion.
Background
It is generally recognised that modern day challenges to
inequalities in power between patients and professionals
in the UK came from the rise of user groups in the 1980s
(Brandon, 1991; Campbell & Lindow, 1997; Rogers &
Pilgrim, 1991), such as Survivors Speak Out. Patient and
public involvement in mental health and social care has
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