Greetings - just to be clear, you are looking to improve relational skills of nurses through the use of group performing arts experiences? If so, I would think group experiences would be effective - things like group creative problem solving through movement labs, use of group improvisation and one-on-one movement tasks to improve relational skills, reading of body movements/gestures and sensitivity to others. Your second task, if I am correct, is how to quantify this? Coming up with a rubric or set of benchmarks that you have identified as your ultimate goals/outcomes - i.e. number of times individuals make eye contact, number of responses to other person's gestures, etc might be a good way to begin...

There's British theatre company called the Clod Ensemble that is very well versed in using performing arts to train medical practitioners. The company is affiliated to St Barts and related hospitals, and is funded by the Wellcome Trust (among others) so I suspect that they have their evaluation strategies pretty well covered and could probably advise. you could try: http://www.performingmedicine.com/

Thanks Alex

That would be really useful.

Janine suggested some techniques that we have already used.

Unless I will find the time requested to be more precise I will add some more details of our experience.

Thanks a lot for you helpful suggestions

There might be something relevant in the literature on music therapy. However, it is not a field I have looked at in depth.

David, yes, music therapy as well as dance/movement therapies. May be interesting to find some studies that combine both...a great discussion, this!

It may be appropriate for you to consider using qualitative methodology as well. In a recent article my colleagues and I outline a strategy for measuring change in student nurse attitudes towards clients who are homeless. Such an idea might be helpful.

Worlds apart in the same town? A qualitative comparison of pre- and post-clinical themes assessing student nurse perceptions of homeless, mentally ill clients.

Wendy C Kooken, Julie K Baylor, Kelly R Schwend

Illinois Wesleyan University, 1312 Park Street, STV 214, Bloomington, IL 61701, United States. Electronic address: .

Nurse education today (Impact Factor: 0.91). 07/2013; DOI:10.1016/j.nedt.2013.06.005

Source: PubMed

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ABSTRACT Student nurses' negative attitudes towards men who are homeless and mentally ill disrupt development of therapeutic relationships. Without therapeutic relationships these men may feel stigmatized. Assessing student attitudes allows for insights to improve students' abilities to develop therapeutic relationships. The purpose of this research was to assess student nurses' pre- and post-perceptions towards homeless mentally ill clients during a mental health clinical through analysis of pictorial data. Data was analyzed through a qualitative, phenomenological method. On the first and last days of clinical experience, students were asked to draw a picture in response to the question: "How far apart are you from these men?" We analyzed pre- and post-drawings separately and changes were compared. Four pre-attitude themes and two post-attitude themes were identified. Pre-attitude themes demonstrated student drawings as geographically distanced from the clients and living in two different worlds. Post-drawings reflected themes where clients and students were under the same roof and often physically touching. We suggest using this easily reproducible, inexpensive method to gain insights into student attitudes. The difference in the drawings objectively demonstrates the effectiveness of clinical experiences in changing student nurse attitudes towards men who are homeless and mentally ill.