How a museum of childhood contributed to meaningful learning for first year children’s nursing students?

Background: Evidence endorses that field visits can act as a potent means of creating rich meaningful learning experiences for nursing students. Until now little is known regarding the potential benefit of a museum visit for children’s nursing students. • Aim: This presentation aims to redress gaps in knowledge regarding a visit to a Museum of Childhood for a group of children’s nursing students. • The innovation: A cohort of first year children’s nursing students visited the Museum of Childhood in London. They worked in small groups to investigate a number of important topics, for example child development and play in childhood. Students completed questionnaires aimed to evaluate their experience and perceived impact of the visit on their learning. • Impact of Innovation: Whilst some practical challenges exist when planning a visit of this nature, the value in terms of student learning and increased motivation was clear from student evaluations. Such value has been attributed by students to the fact that the visit encouraged new and differing insights, it encouraged them to be more active participants in their learning and permitted students the opportunity to extend the creation and recall of their experience which in turn reinforced meaningful and memorable learning. • Conclusions and implications: The presentation draws conclusions regarding the impact of such a visit and the associated learning activities in creating memorable learning around a number of key areas within children and young people’s nursing. It also gives guidance for developing future such innovative teaching strategies to the benefit of students and ultimately to the children/young people and families they care fo