Just Because I Am a “Student” Does Not Mean I Should Tolerate It: Students’ Perspectives of Forum Theatre to Address Bullying in Nursing Education

Abstract

The authors of this paper developed a CRAB (Cognitive Rehearsal to Address Bullying) Workshop, using forum theatre as an innovative pedagogical approach to explore the overly prevalent issue of bullying in nursing education. We designed two open-ended descriptive written surveys to obtain feedback from students on the efficacy of the workshop with respect to students’ ability to address bullying, and with respect to their capacity to engage in related embodied learning through Forum Theatre. We collected survey data at two points in time: 1) following a workshop during students’ first year in the program, and 2) following a workshop during students’ final term in the program. We identified three overarching themes from the surveys: a) the socio-political context; b) psychological safety; and c) ways of learning. We developed each of these themes by creating, expanding, and collapsing our collective interpretation of the data. The majority of the student feedback we collected was positive. In this paper we describe the survey-based study, discuss our analysis of findings, and highlight students’ voices through verbatim quotes. In closing, we offer recommendations and questions for nurse educators and academic leaders to consider.