Storytelling-based learning in nursing education: enhancing disease knowledge, clinical reasoning and professional competence among nursing students: a narrative review

Abstract

Storytelling has returned as a purposeful teaching strategy in nursing education. It offers an alternative to didactic, fact-centred instruction by placing disease knowledge within lived clinical narratives. This narrative review synthesises current evidence on storytelling-based learning, including digital storytelling and narrative pedagogy and its influence on nursing students' disease knowledge, clinical reasoning and professional competence. PubMed/MEDLINE, CINAHL, Scopus, Embase, ERIC and Google Scholar were searched using Medical Subject Headings and free-text terms combined with Boolean operators. Primary studies, systematic reviews and theoretical papers published in English were included and synthesised narratively. The literature suggests that storytelling-based learning improves retention of pathophysiological and clinical content, strengthens critical thinking and clinical reasoning and supports empathy, communication, professional identity and humanistic caring ability. Digital and simulation-embedded narratives were particularly effective in engaging learners and encouraging reflective practice and narrative pedagogy helped students move from novice thinking toward more expert-like clinical judgement. The evidence is limited, however, by methodological heterogeneity, small samples and inconsistent outcome measures. Overall, storytelling-based learning appears to be a useful adjunct to traditional nursing curricula, linking theory with clinical practice while nurturing the humanistic side of care. Larger, adequately powered trials with standardised outcome measures are needed to establish its long-term effect on clinical competence and patient outcomes.