Exploring the personal tutor–student relationship: an autoethnographic approach

Accessible summary•  Autoethnographic research was found to be an effective approach to explore educational encounters as a means to develop both teaching and nursing practice. •  The personal tutor/student relationship can be viewed as a parallel process developing alongside student nurse encounters with service users in practice.Abstract In this paper, my personal student Hannah and I narrate an account of aspects of our tutor/student relationship, features of which we consider to have wider relevance to others who occupy similar roles. The decision that we should write about our experience as personal tutor and student was one that emerged rather than was deliberately taken, and that we should write it as an autoethnography similarly became apparent. We had things to say, and wanted to present them in a style that mirrored the multifaceted relationship that developed, and which we continue to cultivate as evidenced by the writing of this piece. We suggest that the roles and relationships explored here extend beyond tutor and student boundaries, and have relevance to nurse and service–user encounters which we demonstrate through the use of particular frameworks for the analysis of our autoethnographic account. We explore these narratives of our relationship by utilizing concepts such as, ‘boundaries’, ‘learning’, ‘supervision’ and ‘therapy’. In doing so, a shape of personal tutoring emerges which in turn may serve as a valuable teaching technique within mental health nurse education.