“Map ourselves through Digital Storytelling”: pedagogical tool to develop self-knowledge skills in advanced practice psychiatric-mental health nursing

Abstract

By creating digital stories people are encouraged to reminisce about events with an impact on their life and personal and professional development. This paper aims to determine nurses' perspectives regarding a pedagogical tool - Digital StoryTelling (DST). Our qualitative study design used video focus groups involving 20 master's students in mental health nursing during the academic year 2020/2021. Students highlighted the creative content of digital stories and their potential to develop self-awareness, socio-emotional regulation and interpersonal relationships. The scarce digital literacy and the difficulty in putting emotion in the content of the stories stood out as the main barriers. Thus, a more individualized follow-up will be necessary to help students. Further research may benefit from exploring how the DST tool can assist a more diverse group of users.