“You Want Me to Come to Your Office?!”: Student Experiences of Moving From Failure to Success in a Nursing Course

Abstract

The experiences of undergraduate nursing students facing and overcoming failure in their coursework must be understood in order for nurse educators to effectively engage and provide supportive strategies to their students. A student-centred learning perspective and interpretive phenomenological approach to research frames this study of 10 students’ accounts of their experiences from failure to success in a second-year nursing course. Central themes include: feeling uncomfortable, finding confidence, and cultivating a new identity. Seeking feedback and building study habits and central to the students' pursuit of confidence and new identity formation. Implications for nurse educators’ proactive engagement with students identified as being “at risk” are discussed and strategies proposed. Individualized, student-centred, and focused feedback forged from trusted student–instructor relationships appear to be central strategies to assist the transition between failure and success.