The extent, variability and attitudes towards volunteering among nursing students: What are the implications for pedagogy in nurse education?

Since the Francis Inquiry into failings in care at one hospital trust in the UK, government and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) have focused on behaviourist solutions to nurses’ apparent lack of care and compassion. The concept of `values-based recruitment`, which aims to attract and select healthcare students, trainees or employees, on the basis that their individual values and behaviours align with the values of the NHS Constitution is one such solution. However, a major problem with the notion of values-based recruitment in nursing and midwifery is that this individualizes an issue more adequately conceptualized as about social relations, in that care is an emergent property of social relationships, and that the potential for caring cannot therefore be reduced to alleged qualities residing inside the person. In addition, values, and how these are enacted, are likely to vary according to class, gender and ethnicity. Values–based recruitment in therefore unlikely to provide effective solutions to ensuring nurses have the requisite skills for caring and compassionate practice, rather these skills need to be integral to the nursing curriculum.
An alternative to values based recruitment lies in conscious consideration of critical pedagogies, for example narrative pedagogy, which is argued to help students to challenge their assumptions and think through and interpret situations they encounter from multiple perspectives. Narrative pedagogy can be incorporated into the nursing curriculum through the use of structured volunteering activities, which, when followed by reflection may lead students to develop a more holistic view of society which acknowledges the importance of inequality and power relationships in understanding the needs of patients. However, despite the potential for student volunteering within undergraduate nursing programmes to promote student nurses self-esteem and to enhance the development of critical thinking skills little evidence exists to support a `pedagogy of volunteering` within the nursing curriculum.