Edinburgh Napier University

  Nursing students care for people from very different backgrounds to their own both in placements during undergraduate training and throughout their careers. Caring for patients requires empathy: seeing the world from others’ perspectives. The social sciences provide considerable insight into understanding the lives of others, often asking difficult questions that challenge stereotypes and encourage reflection. Theories and approaches drawn from the social sciences have much to offer nurse education. However, the extent to which this potential has been realised has been limited and fragmented across the discipline.
The Social Science and Nursing seminar series brings together academics from nurse education, including individuals who have experience of drawing on the social sciences, together with social scientists whose work has been embedded in health. The series sets out to first develop theoretical reasons why nursing curricula should be informed by the social sciences. It then goes on to critically consider the challenges and opportunities presented by those theoretical ideas from the perspective of nurse education and, most importantly, nursing students. The final event then draws together ideas developed to suggest practical ways forward to realise potential and ensure ideas developed during the seminar series go on to become embedded in nurse education.