“I don't know if people realize the impact of their words”: How does feedback during internship impact nursing student learning?

Previous studies on the factors that can affect self-esteem and clinical skills during training among Bachelor’s-level nursing students in Belgium have shown that internships – and evaluation and feedback moments, more specifically – were key points in that process. We did a study to better understand how students experience those moments and which specific aspects of feedback are involved. This article focuses on how feedback is experienced and on the consequences of that in terms of learning. Here we identify the aspects of feedback that can result in positive or negative feedback experiences, with different implications for learning. Our findings highlight the key role that – along with valence – the focus and tone of feedback plays. In addition, students’ lived experience can heighten or dampen their motivation to act on feedback and affect how they regulate their learning behavior when feedback is experienced either positively or negatively. Generally speaking, students show resistance or rejection when feedback is experienced negatively. While these results are consistent with other studies, further research is needed to explore the emotional process at work in feedback processing.