Therapeutic letters in undergraduate nursing education: Ideas for clinical nurse educators

Summary 

Therapeutic letter writing (TLW) is a well-known intervention in family nursing practice but it has been overlooked as a strategy in nursing education to promote relationship-building. This article reviews what is known about TLW and presents what was learned by adding a TLW assignment to undergraduate clinical nursing courses. This paper adds to the evidence supporting TLW as an effective clinical teaching strategy to promote students relational skills and to recognize patients’ strengths. TLW has benefits for students, patients and faculty.

Keywords: Therapeutic letters, Clinical teaching, Strengths-based perspective, Student–patient relationships