Results of cross-faculty 'capstone' assessments involving nursing and performing arts students.

This article describes how 'capstone' assessments were created to provide two different student groups, nursing and performing arts students, with a lived experience of learning together about their own fields of practice. Capstone assessments combine 'live' human simulation with self-reflection and peer review. A capstone assessment is the integration of a body of relatively fragmented knowledge and learning to form a unified whole and can be used as a transitional assessment and a bridging experience to connect knowledge between modules or courses.

Narrative analysis: how students learn from stories of practice.

Aim: To describe and recommend a variety of data analysis methods when engaging in narrative research using story as an aid to nursing students' learning.

Background: Narrative research methodology is used in many nursing research studies. However, narrative research reports are generally unspecific regarding the analysis and interpretive process.

Transforming the findings of narrative research into poetry.

Aim: To offer dramatic poetry as representing findings from narrative research that is more accessible.

Background: This article is drawn from the author's doctorate work on how students' stories about their 'clinical' experiences can aid learning.

Data Sources: Nursing students' stories of clinical practice experiences when engaged in the care of patients represented as dramatic poetry.