Title : The dancing nurse: Using a play-based neuroarts intervention to foster nursing student wellness
Abstract:
Purpose: This project funded through the Renée Flemming Neuroarts Investigator Award, aimed to evaluate neuroarts interventions on nursing students’ well-being at a critical stage in their education. Neuroarts offers a holistic approach to self-compassion skill-building and is an important intervention to study for its potential effect on the current nursing crisis. There is a lack of evidence surrounding neuroarts-based approaches to improve sense of belonging, self-compassion, and mattering in healthcare professionals, particularly at the student level. We will share our information and results of our neuroarts project as a low-risk, high-reward intervention that can be integrated into a nursing curriculum to support student well-being and develop more grounded nurses who can adeptly navigate the evolving and uncertain healthcare landscape. Participants will have a chance to experience a truncated version of the intervention.
Methods: Nursing students in a traditional BSN program at a medium-sized public, regional university participated in three neuroarts interventions over their first year of nursing school. The 2-hour interventions, led by Tara Rynders and her team at The Art and Heart of Healthcare, included holistic workshops that incorporated dance, play, art, and poetry. Students completed pre and post-intervention quantitative surveys assessing self-compassion, sense of belonging, and feelings of mattering. They then completed a qualitative survey after each experience. While not all students could attend all three interventions, many attended at least two. Students overwhelmingly enjoyed the sessions, felt a better connection with their classmates, expressed feeling cared for, and were challenged to get out of their comfort zones. When asked to rate their satisfaction with the interventions' impact on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most impact, students rated it at 9.6.
Background: Nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the United States (BLS, 2024), yet it faces an alarming mental health crisis with burnout and high turnover rates exacerbating the ongoing nursing shortage (AACN, 2024). Resilience and self-compassion are concepts that have received a lot of attention in the nursing literature, both for practicing and student nurses. A newer and yet equally important concept involves personal and professional feelings of mattering. Mattering affects students' mental health and general well-being (Liu et al., 2023). Several review studies have reported that developing resilience can improve student success, sense of belonging, and job satisfaction, hopefully affecting the retention of nurses in the workforce, but longitudinal studies are sparse (Amsrud et al., 2019; Aryuwat et al., 2023). No studies were found using neuroarts interventions beyond music and mindfulness, which have been studied separately.
Implications: The field of neuroarts offers a low-risk, high-yield opportunity to promote nursing student wellness. Incorporating these opportunities throughout nursing school supports a sense of belonging, self-compassion, and feelings of mattering. We hope session participants will take home a better understanding of the intervention and ideas for future research that evaluates neuroarts strategies that begin as a student but embed as functional coping muscle memory, supporting career satisfaction and retention in the workforce.
