How to Use Case Studies in Nursing Education

Nursing education is critically linked to understanding caring techniques and patient responses that can be examined through case studies. Case-study methodology provides a non-traditional approach to the description of nursing practices from the perspective of the patient according to Donna M. Zucker at Nova.edu. These descriptions lay the foundation for research that is vital in nursing education. As a result, students can extract qualitative data that is often used to improve nursing practices for the benefit of the nursing community as a whole.

Instructions

• 1

  Create research questions as a guide to understanding the experience of the patient(s) within the case study. Develop research questions to extract the phenomenon revealed in the case study.

• 2

  Explain the phenomenon by creating thematic maps or simple models that outline the concepts within the case study with the use of grids, charts and clusters of highlighted concepts.

• 3

  Categorize the phenomenon into further dimensional clusters and typologies, such as physiological, psychological or sociological dimensions.

• 4

  Continue to explore the experiences by gathering multiple sources of data that correlates to the case study, including data from existential analysis, medical sociology and resources that describe symbolic interactionism.

• 5

  Reorganize the case study findings into major categories, such as dimensions of experience, levels of meaning, chronological experiences and multiple perspectives.

• 6

  Develop concept-specific generalizations gathered from the major categories that can resonate with the tactic knowledge of students for nursing-education purposes.