Making their way as academics: A qualitative study examining how nurse academics understand and (re)construct academic identity

Academic nurses' transition across an academic career: A qualitative study

AIM

The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of nurse academics' experiences with the transition from clinical practice to academia and throughout their whole career trajectory.

DESIGN

Qualitative study design.

METHODS

Three focus group interviews with 17 nurse academics employed at a University in Norway were conducted in May and June 2020. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS

Nurse academics experienced several diverse career transitions that continued throughout their whole career trajectory, affecting their daily life. Three interconnected themes were identified: 'clinically confident, yet academically uncertain', 'balancing the academic role' and 'lost in academic transition'.

CONCLUSION

This study contributes to a deeper understanding of nurse academics' experiences of transitioning into their academic role and identity. Transition was found not as separate occurrences but was described as several ongoing and concurrent processes throughout their whole career trajectory regardless of seniority level or academic experience. These transitions encompass shifts in identity, new responsibilities and increased tasks, yet often occur without adequate support. As a result, nurse academics may lack the essential skills and knowledge of the academic role.

IMPACT

This study provides insights into nurse academics' transition from clinical practice to academia and throughout their whole career trajectory. This is not a one-time occurrence but a continuous process that takes place throughout their entire career trajectory. This transition is embedded within a complex environment that requires careful consideration and attention. To address challenges regarding career transitions for nurse academics, universities should provide more training and preparation opportunities for all nurse academics when facing different career transitions.

REPORTING METHOD

Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

No patient or public contribution.

Supervising Undergraduate Nursing Students on Their Bachelor's Thesis. A Qualitative Study

Introduction

The bachelor's thesis (BT) in undergraduate education is often an autonomous and individual assignment. It aims to demonstrate knowledge gained through education, to be an assessment tool, and to give new learning outcomes through working on the thesis. The process of working with the BT most often includes individual supervision. There is an absence of support for teachers supervising undergraduate nursing theses, which includes a lack of national or institutional guidelines, role definitions and research material.

Objective

Given the lack of helpful guidelines, this study aims to explore what the teachers emphasize as important regarding their supervision of nursing students writing their BT.

Methods

The study has a qualitative approach, featuring individual semi-structured interviews with nursing teachers supervising nursing students on the BT. Reflexive thematic analysis is used as the method of analysis.

Results

The analyses resulted in two generated themes, each with two subthemes, describing the patterns the teachers emphasize as important aspects of their supervision of nursing students writing their BT. The themes were "The pedagogical approach to the supervision" and "The advantages of the bachelor's thesis to the nursing profession."

Conclusions

The teachers balanced different roles in the supervision of the students. They wanted the students to grow through challenging them, grounded in a relationship of trust and confidence. They were role models for how to be critical thinkers and incorporated critical thinking as a pedagogical implement in supervision, wanting to raise the students to become nurses who think critically. The teachers sought to combine clinical relevance with academic literacy to secure a new generation of nurses able to be a part of the future development of the profession. They wanted to equip the students with knowledge, skills, and confidence to speak up and communicate nursing. Last, the teachers combined their clinical and academic identities in the supervision of the BT.

Transition theory and the emotional journey to medical educator identity: A qualitative interview study

BACKGROUND

Medical academia is in crisis, with fewer people entering and growing concern at numbers leaving. While faculty development is often seen as part of the solution, there are significant issues with faculty not engaging with and resisting development opportunities. Lack of motivation may be linked to what might be called a 'weak' educator identity. We studied medical educators' experiences of career development to gain further insights into: how professional identity may develop; individuals' accompanying emotional responses to perceived identity change; and consideration of the accompanying temporal dimensions. Drawing on new materialist sociology, we explore medical educator identity formation in terms of an affective flow that places the individual within a constantly shifting assemblage of psychological, emotional and social relations.

METHOD

We interviewed 20 medical educators at various career stages, with differing strengths of medical educator self-identity. Using an adapted transition model as a basis for understanding the emotions experienced by those undergoing identity transitions, we explore the process that, for some medical educators, appears to lead to decreased motivation, ambiguous identity and disengagement, but for others results in renewed energy, a stronger and more stable professional identity and increased interest and engagement.

RESULTS

By more effectively illustrating the emotional impact of the transition process leading to a more stable educator identity, we show that some individuals, especially where the change was not sought or welcomed, express their uncertainty and distress through low mood, resistance and an attempt to minimise the significance of undertaking or increasing teaching duties.

DISCUSSION

Understanding the emotional and developmental phases of the transition to medical educator identity has several key implications for faculty development. Faculty development approaches should be alert to the individual educator's stage of transition since this will affect that individual's readiness to accept and respond to guidance, information and support. A renewed emphasis on early educational approaches that will support the transformational and reflective learning of the individual is needed, while traditional approaches emphasising skills and knowledge may be more useful in the later stages. Further testing of the transition model and its applicability to identity development in medical education is indicated.

What do we know about midwives' transition from clinical practice to higher education teaching roles? A scoping review

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this review was to examine the literature to identify what is known about midwives' experiences as academics and their perspectives of transition from clinical practice to university.

INTRODUCTION

Literature on health care practitioners, particularly nurses' transition from clinical experts to novice teachers suggests the transition to academia is challenging.Challenges reported by research studies have identified stress, uncertainty, and lack of a supportive and structured transition. There was a dearth of primary research evidence of midwives' perspectives.

METHODS

A scoping review using the Johanna Briggs Institute three step approach was employed. First, an initial limited search of Google Scholar and CINAHL was undertaken to identify articles on the topic. Second, the text words contained in the titles and abstracts of relevant articles and the index terms used to describe the articles were used to develop a complete search strategy in databases: EMBASE, MIDIRS, Scopus and PubMed. Finally, a manual search of the reference lists of all included sources of evidence was manually searched for additional studies.

RESULTS

Ten papers that included midwives as the participants were located from Australia, The United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) between 2006 and 2022. Analysis of the findings led to three themes: Theme 1: Challenges associated with the transition; Theme 2: Dichotomy of identity; and Theme 3: Fear of losing clinical credibility.

CONCLUSION

In most studies midwives formed a subset of the sample meaning that the voices of midwifery academics are minimised by the experiences of other health practitioners. However, in depth details were located from four personal reflections which identified that transition from clinical practice to academia can result in a duality of roles while individuals come to terms with their new reality and overcome their fear of losing credibility as clinicians. New academics from health tend to hold onto their identity as clinicians rather than adopting their new persona as academics. Fear of losing credibility stems from the need to maintain competence for continued professional registration as clinicians. Further research is needed which focuses on midwives as the target sample to validate the research evidence from this scoping review.

The social construction of nurse educator professional identities: Exploring the impact of a community of practice through participatory action research

Aims

The aim of the study was to explore whether, and how, professional nurse educator identity is co‐constructed by a community of practice.

Design

A critical participatory action research (PAR) methodology was used as it extends the principles of action research by seeking purposeful and sustainable social change that recognizes participants as researchers and generators of knowledge.

Methods

Twenty‐two sector‐based nurse educators employed as either nurse educators or clinical nurse educators participated in the critical PAR. Multiple methods of data generation were pursued in a cyclic and sequential manner consistent in an action research process. Three distinct phases of the research across 2015–2017 involved the generation of data before, during and after the establishment of a nurse educator community of practice. A social constructionist lens of analysis was used to explore the social and relational outcomes. The COREQ checklist was used to appraise the study report.

Results

A sustained period of community of practice engagement enhanced the participants' relationships and shifted their perceived professional identities towards being validated nurse educators with a stronger collective sense of their roles.

Conclusion

For this group of nurse educators, participation in the research resulted in collective meaning‐making, praxis, knowledge generation and the co‐construction of their professional identities.

Nurses struggle to authenticate sector‐based nurse educator professional identities. It was found that a purposeful community of practice facilitates the co‐construction of nurse educator professional identities. Currently, under‐used in nurse educator research, PAR and community of practice theory are recommended for nurses or other health professionals seeking practice development, role validation, retention and satisfaction.