Nursing students' learning to tackle social inequalities: the use of competency-based interviewing and software-supported analysis in qualitative research

Introduction: Social inequalities, recognized as the vital, material and existential differences between individuals and population groups, are a dynamic and multidimensional phenomenon. Reducing the impacts of inequalities is one of the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda, and initiatives are needed, including professional training. Thus, an online extension course was developed to develop nursing students' competencies based on experiential learning. Competence is understood as the ability of individuals to take action that mobilizes attitudinal, procedural and conceptual components at the same time. Objective and method: To analyze the learning developed by nursing students to tackle social inequalities. Qualitative study carried out with 8 students defined by an intentional sample representing two students from each of the course's 4 tutorial groups. Data was collected by means of an interview focusing on competencies. The purpose of the interview was to ask the participants about their experience of the educational intervention, the learning generated and the achievement of competences. The interviews were transcribed and submitted to Critical Discourse Analysis using MAXQDA 2022 software. A list of codes drawn up by the researchers was used with discursive representations of social inequalities and the learning generated by the course. The software helped to organize the data and the peer review process, reducing bias. All ethical aspects were respected. Results: The findings show the mobilization of skills related to the conceptual component with understanding and identification of situations of social inequalities. The analysis showed that after the course, the discourses on the concept of inequalities reached greater depth, referring to the structural dimension and the intention to assume attitudes to confront social inequalities. Conclusions: The use of the competency-focused interview and the MAXQDA software were essential for analyzing the learning and competency development processes.