Nursing students and sport: health promotion, team building and professional skills education

Abstract

Background: Nursing profession requires a complex set of capacities, such as team building, reaching a common goal, understanding of different roles, good communication, and positive conflict resolution. Teaching this kind of competencies during the university course is challenging. Team sports require quite similar abilities to those of a nursing tam. Introducing team sport into academic course could contribute to teach and to train these key competencies to nursing students.

Aim: To improve important personal skills for nursing profession through team sport.

Methods: Students were invited to participate in team sport activities. To promote autonomy and initiative students were asked to create two teams (soccer and volleyball), to organize groups, to assign roles, and to choose the uniform. The two teams participated to a city university sports championship. Nursing school supported students in all the activities. At the end of the sport season, an anonymous questionnaire was administered to students.

Results: 24/107 nursing students (22.4%) participated, 13/24 males (54%) and 11/24 females (46%), (mean age 22.42 years, SD 2.28). 15/24 students (62.5%) attended all the training sessions. Students satisfaction was generally very positive in terms of physical wellness (87.5%), team building (95.8%), sharing and working for common goals (100%), and positive conflict resolution (100%), both when witnessed and experienced. All students would repeat and recommend the experience.

Conclusions: Results were generally positive, but further research is necessary to evaluate potential positive effects in terms of nursing activities.

Nursing implications: Nursing course is very challenging, and promoting team-sport activities among students could have positive impact on professional skills education.