A Study on the Self-reflection Experience of Nursing Students through Psychiatric Ward Practice: IPA

Objectives This study is to understand in-depth the nature of these experiences by confirming and describing the semantic structure of nursing students' introspection experiences. Methods This study is a qualitative study to reveal the subjective meaning of perceived and experienced contents in the psychiatric ward practice of nursing students using the Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis(IPA) re-search method. The subjects of this study were 10 third-year nursing students who experienced the practice of psychiatric wards at one university in Gyeongsangbuk-do. The data were collected from July 20 to September 20, 2019. Data were analyzed using IPA. Results As for the research results, 10 sub-themes and three sub-themes were derived. The first upper theme was ‘A wall of prejudice against psychiatry’, which was different from the existing practice, had prejudice against psychiatric patients, and even had distrust of oneself. The second upper theme is ‘Experience of criticism and un-derstanding’. The study participants experienced various and complex changes of emotions and thoughts while facing psychiatric patients for the first time, and named them ‘observation and understanding of patients’. The third upper theme is ‘Growth through psychiatric practice’. Participants in the study reported that they felt different through the process of self-reflection and that their relationship with patients changed positively. Conclusions The result suggests that, the essence of nursing college students' self-reflection experience not only helps students grow positively, but also provides the basis for the development of the curriculum for more sub-stantial practical education by presenting educational goals of psychiatric nursing. Therefore, efforts should be made to develop educational and program data that can promote self-reflection of nursing students based on the research results.