Creative Health Placement, University of Chester
Cheshire and Merseyside

The Faculty of Health & Social Care at the University of Chester developed a close working relationship with The Philip Barker Centre for Creative Learning to embed the arts into the new undergraduate and postgraduate nursing curricula.  Each level of the undergraduate nursing curricula now includes direct contact with artists of different disciplines as a part of students’ academic work. 

One example of this involves students using sketchbooks to develop a deeper understanding of their emerging professional identity. Another is an engagement with drama training and musicians through interprofessional, immersive simulation training as practice.  

This is helping to foster an asset-based approach to delivering personalised non statutory care that is rooted in the idea of wellbeing promotion and preventative health embedded within local communities.  As such, the approach represents a much-needed and long overdue counterbalance to the bio-medical model.   

One example of this involves students using sketchbooks to develop a deeper understanding of their emerging professional identity.