Rachel A. Elliott

Effects of pervasive exposure to trauma result in a costly public health crisis. Trauma-informed care (TIC) is a well-known and established health care approach for supporting individuals who experience trauma. Despite increasing recognition of its importance, TIC remains poorly integrated into nursing education, with reasons that are not yet well understood. This interpretive descriptive study explored nurse educators’ perspectives on the facilitators and barriers for embedding TIC into nursing curricula in Ontario, Canada. Twenty eight participants were purposively sampled from an online survey of 145 respondents for semistructured interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis guided the generation of key facilitators and barriers. Facilitators included: passionate educators, innovative teaching strategies, supportive leadership, and collaborative teaching models. The barriers to TIC integration in undergraduate nursing programs included: the invisibility of TIC in curricula; a lack of faculty training and confidence; overloaded, siloed program structures; challenges with authentic assessment; and inconsistent role modelling in clinical settings. Embedding TIC into undergraduate nursing education requires intentional curricular mapping, institutional support, faculty development, and alignment with clinical practice and experiential learning. Effective integration of TIC in undergraduate nursing curricula is needed to equip nurses to address the growing global burden of trauma and support a resilient nursing workforce.

Research indicates that cultural competence is lacking among registered nurses, and nurses commonly report feeling ill-equipped to care for culturally diverse patients. This qualitative study employed a blended methodological approach informed by narrative inquiry and participatory action research to explore undergraduate nursing students’ development of cultural competence during an international, interprofessional clinical placement. Ten undergraduate nursing students completed a 3-week clinical placement in partnership with preservice teachers from the Faculty of Education. Aligned with participatory action research commitments to democratizing knowledge production, students were engaged as co-authors across multiple stages of the study. This approach recognized students as knowledge holders whose experiential insights shaped the analytic process. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, and reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken iteratively, emphasizing the co-construction of themes. Five themes were generated: (1) opportunities for personal growth, (2) relationship building to facilitate collaboration, (3) interprofessional teamwork and leadership skills, (4) cultural competence development through immersion, and (5) shifting mindsets and learning from resource-limited settings. Findings underscore how structured reflection and debriefing can deepen equity-oriented learning by enabling students to critically examine assumptions, power, and privilege. These insights support the integration of international and interprofessional placements, alongside reflective pedagogy, into undergraduate nursing curricula.

Interpretive description is recognized as a valuable and credible qualitative approach for answering applied research questions. However, guidance for novice researchers on how to apply it remains scarce. This paper responds to that gap by presenting a reflective account of my doctoral research process, illustrating how interpretive description can be operationalized from study conceptualization through design, analysis and knowledge translation. It contributes additional methodological guidance to the literature, particularly for novice scholars whose research questions address practice-oriented problems. As a nursing researcher passionate about creating change in nursing education, I aim to create safer and more equitable learning environments in undergraduate nursing programs. When I embarked on my doctoral research, I sought a methodology that could tackle this complex and real, education and practice-driven goal. Interpretive description was an accessible and rigorous qualitative framework that respected my disciplinary knowledge and supported practical solutions for nursing education. In this paper, I share my personal journey of using interpretive description as the primary methodology for my dissertation. I offer reflections and recommendations to support other novice researchers considering interpretive description as a framework for generating credible and clinically meaningful insights that are relevant and actionable in their real-world practice contexts.