gms | German Medical Science

Background and Purpose: Including patients’ perspectives across the continuum of nursing education is important to develop the patient-centred orientation new graduates need. Educational research produces the evidence-base for degree programmes to enable this development. The purpose of this presentation is to illuminate the results of educational research essentially involving patients’ perspective.

Methods – Methodological and Theoretical Focus: Three research projects are introduced. In these projects, patients are considered as key informants and the results for their part are regarded equally valid and important as for any other informant groups. Patients are approached as they are: they are not trained nor required to have prior qualifications. Patients have provided their perspectives by answering the surveys and participating in an educational intervention targeted to students, Further, their previous perspectives have been described based on the literature.

Results: For patients’ involvement in nursing students’ clinical education (2015–2018), patients are gradually taking a more active role in the learning and assessment processes of students. For nursing students and older people nursing (OPN) as their career choice (2016), the involvement of older people in education impacted students and their choices to pursue careers in OPN positively. For a recently launched European project entitled Professional Competence in Nursing (PROCOMPNurse; 2017‒2021), patients will provide their perspective in different aspects related to the competence of graduating nursing students.

Conclusions: In general, patients appreciate their opportunity to contribute to education and thus to enhance the quality of patient care. More research is recommended to gain greater understanding about how the potential of this untapped resource could be fully realized.