Disconfirming Beliefs: The Use of Poetry to Know the Lived Experience of Student Nurses in Mental Health Clinicals

An aesthetic pattern of knowing involves moving beyond classifications and knowing the whole individual. Students are taught to provide holistic care to patients, but instructors evaluate students primarily from a scientific, empirical perspective. To add balance between the art and the science of nursing practice, students were assigned to write an original poem about their clinical experience in mental health nursing. This article reports a qualitative analysis of those poems to expand the instructors' knowledge of the student experience. Five themes and one consistent pattern were identified. Insights and implications of student poetry writing are explored.