PURPOSE: This study was carried out to identify and re-establish the professional identity in clinical nurses. METHOD: From Dec. 1999, for 4 months, the study had been conducted by narrative analysis method based on hermeneutic principles. Subjects were ten nurses with 3-4 years of nursing experience at a university hospital. The data were collected and transcribed through narrative interviews. RESULT: As a result, the maternal role was identified as the most dominant discourse in which nurses formed their identity. Subjects felt that a maternity is socio-culturally needed in case of nursing. Reconstruction of professional identity consists of 3 stages, Telling, Retelling and Rebuilding. At first, nurses felt confused by skeptism of the profession, interpersonal difficulties, and heavy work loads. However, during the interviews, nurses recognized that nursing is not regarded as significant, effort to make nursing meaningful were small, and there was a lack of understanding others. From this new insight, they re-established a new image of nursing "through better understanding of others, seeking knowledge, and making positive efforts towards qualified nursing". CONCLUSION: The above narrative interviews may help nurses reflect and contextually interpret themselves, so that a new identity could be established. Furthermore researchers can obtain new insight from the subjects, while the subjects form a new nursing image from self-reflection.
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Background: Nurses are the “front line” staff in most health systems and their contribution is recognised as essential in meeting development goals and delivering safe and effective care (ICN, 2007). Nurses are in high demand not only in developed countries but also in developing countries like Malaysia. However, more than 70% of Malaysian hospitals currently do not have adequate nursing staff. At least 174,000 nurses need to be trained by 2020 to meet WHO’s nurse-to-patient ratio of 1:200. The purpose of this study is to identify the main factors that influence the nursing students’ decision to choose nursing as their career. Method: A descriptive study guided by Self Determination Theory was used for this study. A 29- item questionnaire adapted from McCabe, Nowak and Mullen (2005) was distributed to all students in a nursing college (n=117). Results: The five main reasons for choosing nursing as a career were “ability to help others”, “training was provided on the job”, “ability to work closely with people”, “parental advice”, and “accommodation was provided while training”. The top three main domains that influenced the nursing students’ decision to choose nursing as their career include “travel opportunities of nursing”, “intrinsic attraction of nursing” and “immediacy of support on entry to nursing”. A total of 19 (0.2%) will not choose nursing if given a chance. The main reasons were “want to take another course”, “no time to spend with family” and “nursing is a stressful job”. Conclusion: The findings of this study provided valuable information regarding motivating factors which attract the current generation to join nursing. It is of concern that items representing nurses’ image were not rated highly
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Background: The escalating rate of private hospital nurses leaving their workplace raised serious concern among the stakeholders. Past studies had found that nursing practice environment was the key influence on nurses’ leaving intention, but studies examining the quality of nursing practice environment of private hospital settings was scarce and therefore warrant investigation to provide direction for interventions in addressing nursing turnover. Objectives: To determine nurses’ perceptions towards nursing practice environment and whether there is any significant associations with nurses’ demographic variables. Methods: Cross-sectional inferential survey study was conducted at four private hospitals in the Peninsular Malaysia using the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI) and 885 nurses participated in the study. Results: Nurses rated their practice environment as favourable. However, items stated in “staffing and resource adequacy” subscale warrant serious attention because nurses rated poorly on item related to “enough staff to get the work done” (M = 2.37, SD = .81) and “enough registered nurses to provide quality patient care” (M = 2.41, SD = .82). Furthermore, t-test analyses found that nurses with educational sponsorship bond (p < .001), higher educational qualifications (p < .05), and have been working in the hospital since graduation (p < .001) were more likely to rate their practice environment lower. Conclusion: Hospital administrators play significant role in sustaining and creating positive nursing practice environment in order to ensure steady supply of nurses to meet the challenging healthcare needs.
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Background: Clinical teaching is an important and essential teaching tool in the clinical area. Clinical teaching and learning is essential for the development and progression of experiential nursing knowledge. Objectives: This research study aims to identify the perceptions and evaluations regarding clinical teaching among Year 2 and Year 3 nursing students, and also to find out if there are any differences in the perceptions and evaluations of the nursing students in regards to clinical teaching. Methods: The formula for calculating the sample size was adopted from Morris (2005). The sample size obtained from the calculation with the confidence interval of 95%, was 132 participants. The participants were taken from a universal population of 142 diploma nursing students: 50 Year 2 nursing students and 92 Year 3 nursing students from the International Medical College in Selangor. The research instrument used was the Bedside Teaching Evaluation questionnaire that was adapted with approval by the writer from the University of Witwatersrand Department of Surgery (2008). A pilot study was conducted on 20 participants of Year 1 to Year 3 nursing students from the Assunta College of Nursing, with a Cronbach’s alpha reliability index of 0.89. Results: The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics to find out the participant’s perceptions and evaluations regards clinical teaching; and also to compare the perceptions and evaluations between the two groups of nursing students from Years 2 and 3. The study findings showed that 46% (n=142) of the respondents had a good feedback on all the five (5) items under the perceptions of clinical teaching whereas 42% (n=142) of the respondents had a moderate view on all the five (5) items in the perceptions of clinical teaching sessions. With regards to the evaluation of clinical teaching sessions, 50% of the respondents had a moderate feedback on all the three (3) items in this section. Conclusion: Most of the participants perceived and evaluated the clinical teaching as an important teachinglearning strategy in enhancing clinical learning.
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PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop and examine the feasibility of OSCE for novice nurses. METHOD: The study was designed using a methodological design. Data were collected from January to February, 2005. Nine stations were developed for the examination. Five minutes was allowed for each station. The examination was administered to 2 groups of novice nurses. RESULTS: OSCE for clinical performance improvement which consisted of nine 5-minute long stations, was developed. Those stations were tested by 79 beginning nurses who were divided into 2 groups. Reliability ranges for Cronbach's alpha were 0.399~0.811 and the mean value was 0.797. Total mean score for the OSCE was 66.75. Total score for the 2nd group was significantly higher than the 1st group. The nurses were satisfied with the OSCE method and process. CONCLUSION: The OSCE can be an effective tool for evaluating clinical nursing skills in novice nurse. More reliable and valid stations need to be developed and then repeated evaluation of the nurses can be done.
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Despite numerous accounts of political participation in the nursing discipline, there exists a limited understanding of the concept of political competency. This paper utilizes Walker and Avant's (2014) eight steps of concept analysis. The defining attributes of political competency are ethical and sociopolitical knowing, courage, perseverance, and persuasion. The antecedents of the concept are reflection, resources, and clarity of values. Lastly, the consequences of political competency are change and social justice. Both change and social justice, as end products, must be viewed not as consequences that can be achieved overnight. Instead, these consequences must be looked upon as processes that are sustained by ongoing and committed exchanges between actors in the political arena and nurses with political competency. In juxtaposing political competency to Patricia Benner's “novice to expert model,” future studies may attempt to determine how political competency is embodied by an expert nurse.
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