Welcome to this new series! 🎬

Storytelling is a powerful teaching tool. In the Pillars of Active Learning Series, we discussed the neuroscience behind how our brains are hardwired to learn from stories.

​ Stories are estimated to be two to ten times more memorable than facts alone.

When we hear a story, we connect with the speaker's message by imagining ourselves in the story and experiencing all the emotions involved. This engagement makes stories, or content with a narrative structure, more memorable. And we can use this tool to our teaching advantage!

But we never really learn how to write or present an engaging story (unless you studied literature alongside nursing - I would love to hear if you did!). I recently came across an article on the storytelling principles of Pixar (the animation studio that created movies like Inside Out, Finding Nemo, and Toy Story). And while the list was long, I pulled a few that I felt applied to our work as nursing instructors.

This next series will look at storytelling in nursing through the lens of the Pixar storytelling principles. As an additional bonus to this series, I will include AI prompts that you can use as a supplement to your writing and storytelling. Let’s get started with the first one!

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​You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

When writing case studies for nursing education, this Pixar principle can help you to focus on what’s necessary for entry to practice nurses rather than just what’s fun to write. While creating detailed, uncommon scenarios might be enjoyable for you as a writer, it’s crucial to focus on the ultimate goal for our students - be safe and competent to enter into nursing practice.
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📝 When considering what to include in a lesson, focus on real-world scenarios that students are likely to encounter. For example, if you are teaching a lesson on heart failure, students are much more likely to encounter I&O imbalances, weight gain and changes in lung sounds in clinical practice than more obscure conditions, such as cardiac cachexia or ischemic hepatitis. Focus your time, energy, and application on these common topics rather than exploring rare conditions.
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🔎 Use the lens of “entry to practice” with every activity you create. Edit with care to only include the most relevant topics.

AI Prompt for Principle #1

If you struggle with this type of editing, AI may be able help. I like to think of tools like ChatGPT as “getting clay on the table” and I believe that they can help nurse educators to be more efficient, creative, and free up valuable mental bandwidth. Your expertise is crucial in this process, and AI can be a valuable tool to enhance your work.
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As part of this series, I will provide prompts that you can use with AI tools to generate, edit and filter your ideas.
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​🚨 A note about AI prompts: AI will not replace your nursing or teaching experience, so as always, use these alongside your own clinical judgment.

If you are not interested in using AI, no worries! These prompts are designed to be flexible, so you can still use your knowledge and expertise and still do these exercises.

Try it out:

You can copy and paste this prompt into your AI tool of choice. Add your own information anywhere that you see [brackets].

Similar to if you were working with a human consultant, you can train ChatGPT to understand the work that you are doing. For the first three weeks of this series, there will be an AI prompt provided. If you use these in the same chat, ChatGPT will “remember” what you are talking about and continue to build on the information that you provide.
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Next week, we will look into Pixar’s “story spine” and see how it could be used in nursing education. Until then 👋
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