Can horses really teach us more about ourselves? Evidence that one can effectively learn with horses had been mostly anecdotal, and very little quantitative research has been done. So a team nurse researchers as well as the Center for Leadership Development in the UK conducted a study to test the effectiveness in the emerging field of equine assisted learning.
Their results were reviewed in an article written by the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment:
“In comparing the before and after results of the online EQ assessment, this pilot study showed that nurses who attended the workshop scored higher in all four competency areas when compared to the control group that did not. Though the pilot sample was small, qualitative responses from the nurses participating in the workshop clearly attribute changes in their bedside manner to lessons learned from interacting with the horses. One of the most common nurse statements was how the horse made them aware of the importance of their body language in communicating their thoughts, emotions, and intentions to others.”
“In comparing the before and after results of the online EQ assessment, this pilot study showed that nurses who attended the workshop scored higher in all four competency areas when compared to the control group that did not. Though the pilot sample was small, qualitative responses from the nurses participating in the workshop clearly attribute changes in their bedside manner to lessons learned from interacting with the horses. One of the most common nurse statements was how the horse made them aware of the importance of their body language in communicating their thoughts, emotions, and intentions to others.”
Read the article “Horses Teaching Humans about Leadership” here: http://www.thehorse.com/articles/32106/horses-teaching-humans-about-leadership
Research like this is a good start, and can be a launching point for further studies with larger population sizes and different training backgrounds to further prove the effectiveness of horse assisted education. If horse assisted education can better the bedside manners of a few nurses in the UK, then imagine if this learning process is applied to the entire medical field!
RSS Feed
