Teaching The Practice Of Compassion To Nursing Students Within An Online Learning Environment: A Qualitative Study Protocol

Background: There is an increasing global demand for higher education to incorporate flexible delivery. Nursing education has been at the forefront of developing flexible online education and offering programs ‘anywhere and anytime’. In response to calls to teach compassion in nursing education, there is an abundance of literature concerning classroom teaching, but few online studies. Design: This paper presents a qualitative study protocol to explore the effectiveness of a compassion module taught to undergraduate nursing students within a digital learning environment. The protocol consists of an online knowledge intervention (compassion module) and pre- and post-intervention qualitative questions to explore and describe undergraduate nursing students’ understanding and learning about the practice of compassion toward patients, colleagues and self. Methods: Students will study the online compassion module over a two week period in a theory course in the final year of the Bachelor of Nursing. Students will participate in the study by responding to open-ended questions, administered through SurveyMonkey® before and after studying the online compassion module. Free text responses will be analysed thematically. The researchers will obtain institutional ethical approval. Discussion: This study protocol may generate new knowledge about how nursing students learn compassionate practice within an online learning environment. These findings could be used by nurse leaders and educators to develop empirically supported curricula and workplace cultures to foster the practice of compassion and resilience in the next generation of nurses.