Opinions of Polish postgraduate nursing students on medical humanization courses in relation to age, years of service, and nursing specialty

Abstract

Background: The Polish educational system for nurses has undergone a substantial transformation over the past two decades, with the introduction of a mandatory university education that encompasses humanization in medicine. Consequently, nurses who had been licensed to practice before the implementation of the reform returned to universities to pursue master's degrees alongside their younger colleagues who had only recently obtained bachelor's degrees. This distinctive learning environment, in which nurses of varying ages and years of practice study together, offers an opportunity to gain insight into their perspectives on the educational process. Accordingly, the present study aims to examine the opinions of Polish postgraduate nursing students at one university regarding medical humanization courses, focusing on the extent to which these opinions are shaped by age, years of service, and specialty of nursing care.

Methods: From February to June 2023, an anonymous survey was conducted on the university's online platform, involving 89 out of 169 participants in the master's degree nursing program. The newly designed questionnaire comprised 15 primary questions and 11 metric questions.

Results: The study population consisted of registered nurses with a mean age of 35 years (ranging from 22 to 54 years). The majority of participants were women (97.8%). The analysis revealed that older students (Spearman's rho 0.480, p < 0.001) and those with more years of professional experience (Spearman's rho 0.377, p < 0.001) perceived humanizing classes as a vital component of nurse training and work. Younger and less experienced students did not share this perspective. Specialization status was also identified as a differentiating factor (Chi² = 10.830, p < 0.05). However, other characteristics, including the number of positions held during the survey, the type of position, the primary employer, and the nature of work (shift or non-shift), did not exhibit statistically significant differentiation among participants.

Conclusions: This study found age- and work-experience-related differences in nursing students' opinions toward courses teaching humanization in health care. The results suggest that changing the teaching format and involving older and more experienced students in sharing experiences with younger and less experienced students could potentially improve the implementation of learned skills in clinical practice.

Keywords: Curriculum; Humanities; Medical humanities; Nursing; Quality of education.

Fig. 1

Schematic representation of the types of nursing education offered in Poland after World War II. Created with BioRender.com. Partly based on information published in [18]

Fig. 2

Box plots (5–95 percentile) showing the scores obtained in response to questions A - E in the age groups. 2 A, Do you think that humanization/medical humanities classes are necessary for training as a nurse?; 2B, Is the content of humanization courses useful for nursing practice?; 2 C, Do you think that the time allotted for implementing the Humanization Classes is sufficient?; 2D, Do you think there was unnecessary content in the humanization classes?; 2E, In your opinion, should medical humanities content be systematically recalled in the form of on-the-job training? Age groups: 1 (18–29 years), 2 (30–39 years), 3 (40–49 years), 5 (50 + years). The between-group differences were calculated using Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn’s multiple comparisons test. *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.005; ***, p < 0.001. Created with BioRender.com