Available online 21 March 2024

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What is currently known about this topic? Self-care is an important part of professional nursing identity that can contribute to the longevity of a career.

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What the paper adds to the existing knowledge? This paper discusses the integration of various self-care interventions into the first semester of a nursing program and identifies some of the continued barriers students face in performing self-care activities.

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How the information in your manuscript can be applied to practice? The self-care interventions explained in this project could be used or modified by nurse educators to purposefully integrate self-care into the curriculum.

AbstractBackground

Both nursing students and nurses face stressors. Part of a strong nursing professional identity includes the ability to perform self-care activities. However, self-care has not been a formalized component of nursing education.

Methods

This mixed-methods scholarship of teaching and learning project used a pre-post design with survey and narrative responses to determine relationships between purposeful integration of self-care spaces and mini lessons and students’ perceived self-care barriers, motivators, and participation.

Results

Results indicated positive changes on many aspects of the survey, particularly in stress control, relaxation, and work-life balance; however, there was a decline in reported sleep. The most popular mini lessons were exercise, sleep hygiene, meditation, and meal preparation. Time emerged as a major barrier to participation in self-care activities, along with low motivation and self-imposed expectations.

Conclusions

Incorporating a variety of self-care opportunities into the first semester of a nursing program may be a beneficial way to support students. Self-care activities could also be scaffolded throughout the program to reinforce learning and contribute to professional identity formation.

Section snippetsBackground

Healthy, holistic self-care practices should be an integral part of a nurse's professional identity. Nurse educators can help students identify and develop their personal practices by incorporating self-care concepts into the curriculum. By introducing self-care practices, students can find activities that meet their needs and have a toolkit for future self-care practices once they begin their nursing careers.

Pender's revised health promotion model served as the framework for developing the

Intervention

The SOTL project was based in the intersection of scholarship of teaching and learning and social psychology, specifically in the relationship between the learning environment and student behavior (Gurung & Schwartz, 2013, p. 42). The intervention was targeting student wellbeing. First, communal spaces in the nursing building were adapted to support self-care activities. A small, underused library was converted into a mindfulness space with soft lighting, plants, white noise, meditation

Project design and Methods

Neither quality improvement nor research, SOTL projects still must meet the standards of the discipline of teaching (Felten, 2013). The main principles guiding SOTL include a focus on student learning, the project is grounded in the learning environment, the methodology is intentional and rigorous, the project takes place in partnership with students, and the outcomes of the project are disseminated (Felten, 2013, pp. 122-124). Miller-Young and Yeo (2015) addressed the need for the theory and

Quantitative Data

The response rate for the presurvey was 81% (n = 65); however, the postsurvey was only 41% (n = 33). Descriptive analysis was used for the demographic characteristics of participants. The HPL II scale uses a 4-point Likert scale ranging from never to routinely for each health-promoting activity listed. There were no significant differences on any of the 52 items between the surveys (Mann-Whitney U > .05 for all items). Thirteen items that most closely matched the ten in-class mini lessons were

Quantitative Data Results

The sample was predominantly female (69.5%), with a mean age of 24.64 years old. Many of the students lived with roommates (44.6%), and most students worked during the school year (4.6% full time, 6.2% 30 to 39 hours per week, 20% to 29%, 23.1% 10-19 hours, and 9.2% work nine or fewer hours). The thirteen items from the HLP II chosen for descriptive analysis are represented in Table 1. Though the differences were not statistically significant, positive changes were noted in most of the items.

Triangulation and Discussion

There was a consistent pattern across all data points when triangulating the data. Time management due to competing priorities limited students’ participation in self-care activities. Over 30% of the student respondents reported working at least 20 hours per week in addition to their full-time academic schedule. Postsurvey results on the HLP II indicated that sleep was not prioritized despite the high number of respondents selecting the sleep mini lesson. This dynamic, however, was clarified by

Limitations

There were limitations to this scholarship of teaching and learning project. This was a pilot project involving one cohort of students. There was a large drop in postsurvey participation which can affect the analysis comparison of percentages. Students who did not participate in the postsurvey may have been significantly different than those who chose to participate, either positively or negatively in relation to self-care behaviors. In addition, this study was conducted with students in their

Conclusions

The need for further research, education, and implementation relating to self-care is evident throughout the analysis process. The self-care mini lessons implemented in this project were designed to target and support the needs of beginning nursing students. These lessons aimed to establish a strong connection across spiritual, physical, and stress reduction fields in order to change behaviors as a learning outcome to promote overall health, thereby contributing to developing their professional

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Sarah Llewellyn: Data curation, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft. Tracee Chapman: Data curation, Investigation, Writing – original draft. Kelley Connor: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Writing – original draft.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors have no known conflicts of interest to disclose.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Boise State University School of Nursing and Marty Downey for supporting self-care activities within the School of Nursing.

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