Intern Nursing Students' Identification On Nurse Role And Influencing Factors

Graduation practice in the hospital is a key stage for nursing students to establish their social role identity as a nurse. During this period, students' identification of nursing role would impact not only the changing process from a student to be a nurse, but also the formation and development of nursing professional role. As a result, it is of great importance to explore the status and influencing factors of intern nursing students' identification of nursing role. The results will benefit school and clinical nursing education, and help with bringing up high qualified nursing professionals.The purpose of this research is to clarify the status and characteristics of intern nursing students' identification on nurse role, to probe into the influencing factors during their internship period, so as to draw conclusions that would help nursing education and clinical practice. We use both qualitative and quantitative research methods, that is, questionnaire and interview, and the samples include 580 intern nursing students of bachelor degree in Qilu hospital attached to Shandong University and Shandong Provincial hospital.The results showed that students' identification of nurse role is of middle level, with a positive trend in perception, emotion and action towards nursing profession. Diploma nursing students have a higher degree of nurse role identification than bachelor students.Among the personal characters of nursing students, statistical results found that match degree between students' wish and the admitted college, college nature, family status, parents' support of their being a nursing student are all factors that affect students' nurse role identification. When incorporated with other factors of complex practice environment in the hospitals, personal character is not a statistical meaningful factor. This result suggests that students' attitudes, interests and nurse role identification are all undergoing changes through the learning process.According to the results, students recognize clinical teachers, patients, clinical education method, and nursing management as the most important factors that influence their nurse role identification, while equipment and environment of the hospital and previous learned theories are the more important ones.Influencing factors that affect intern nursing students' role identification are as follows: teaching method, patients, hospital environment and equipment, nursing management, previous learned theories and practice tutor. Different factors influence different aspects of students' role identification. Teaching method affects leadership ability mostly; patients have the most important effects on agility and skills; nursing management influences satisfaction degree mostly; while practice tutor works on communication and interaction. On the other hand, factors vary in their influencing ranges. For example, teaching method, patients, hospital environment and equipment have impacts on every aspect of role identification; nursing management influences both skill and satisfaction degree; previous learned theories affect leadership ability and satisfaction degree, while practice tutor influences communication and interaction only. Based on the realization that different factors have different impacts of intern nursing students' role identification, nursing educators could carry out educational activities on specialty with clearer aims.Suggestions: 1. to carry out educational activities on specialty in all dimensions: (1) during the whole process from college entrance to graduation practice; (2) with all faculties including school teachers and clinical practice tutors; (3) from all aspects involving cognition, emotion and action, to react properly to patients' attitudes to nursing. 2. to promote the construction of education base: (1) to choose education base seriously, (2) to train clinical practice tutors regularly, (3) to improve clinical teaching method, (4) to optimize clinical educational environment.