THE USE OF PSYCHODRAMA TO STRENGTHEN SELF CONCEPTS OF STUDENT NURSES

Abstract

In 1954 group dynamic sessions were initiated by the writer with student nurses, sophomores at the Norwalk Hospital School of Nursing, at the request of Mrs. Virgina Gerry, Pediatric Supervisor. Mrs. Gerry had been concerned for many years with the difficulties student nurses displayed in relating to the children on pediatrics, the parents of the children, as well as to nurse's aids. She noted that the students were either too strict, dogmatic, controlling or too permissive and overindulgent to the children and their parents. Toward the nurse's aids the students behaved either in a: superior, snobbish, authoritarian, dogmatic manner, furtively expressing disdain for the inferior education of the aids or they related as peers, fooling about and joking in the presence of the children or the students relating in a subservient, dependent manner to the aids. Furthermore, the students generally griped and complained about everything and everyone.