A practice for nursing students to understand a patient through his book of struggling against disabilities due to cervical injury

Thirty-nine nursing students in their third year were required to read a book written by a male patient struggling against disabilities due to cervical injury for nine years in the hospital and to report their impressions during their clinical practice. The contents of their reports were classified to four categories, that is understanding, helping care, nursing attitude for the patients and problems for the students themselves. The most frequent descriptions were made about understanding the patients, especially about his affliction caused by psychological feeling of his handicaps. The subsequent frequent descriptions were concerning the care of the patients such as importance to improve his residual function and necessity of team work care for the purpose. Doscriptions about nursing attitude were followed. This method was helpful for understanding the situation of a patient and for practicing nursing processes to respond to the patient's needs.