Using creativity to encourage reflection in undergraduate education

Preparing undergraduate nurses to meet the challenges of clinical reality and develop their reflective skills requires innovative and creative pedagogical approaches. It has been suggested that the use of creative arts media enables one to surface well-springs of knowledge and critique it artistically, cognitively and meta-cognitively. Recent research highlights the sense of graduate nurses being unprepared at the completion of their undergraduate studies to face the responsibilities and challenges of being a registered nurse. Confronted as an educator with the challenge to address this sense of un-preparedness, Jenny sought to introduce an element of creative reflectivity into a final year clinical practice unit of the Bachelor of Nursing. This was done in anticipation that it might encourage students to draw upon their multiple intelligences, embrace their artistic intelligence and realise their knowledge and learning. This paper presents through a reflective dialogue, the approach taken by the authors sharing their experiences of the introduction of reflective creativity into the course. Examples of creative works produced by students are celebrated, as are the responses to those works. Students expressed their learning, in many differing media and in doing so gained a sense of realisation that during their course of study they had actually acquired a knowledge base to engage as novice practitioners. As educators it raised a significant issue of being caught up in the creativity of the student and the need to see beyond the creation into the meaning and reflection of what it offered.