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Tidskrift

Sammanfattning

It is typical that students apply to nursing education with idealistic expectations about nursing. During the nursing education, however, students have reported a decrease of motivation because of dissatisfaction with the content of education and difficulties in understanding the relevance of theoretical studies for nursing practice. The contradiction between theoretical and practical studies in nursing education has been the focus of several research projects and discussions, but not from the viewpoint of students' orientation to nursing and the way in which it affects the process of learning to nurse. The concept of orientation is based on theories of cognitive psychology, and it has been defined in activity theory as a process of anticipating, analysing and planning an activity. Orientation is directed by motives and the quality of orientation predicts the quality of learning. The purpose of this research was to describe the social processes involved in nursing students' orientation to nursing at the beginning of their education. The study was conducted qualitatively. The data consisted of essays and interviews of the students' and were analysed using constant comparative analysis. Three different orientations to nursing were found: a caring orientation, a nursing expertise orientation and a life orientation. The orientations differed from each other with regard to the students' caring and nursing experiences, the meaning of nursing for the student, and the expectations applied to a nursing career. The experiences varied from meaningful personal experiences about caring encounters to experiences without any specific meaning for the student's choice of a nursing career. Nursing was defined as altruistic service, an expert profession in health care or an instrument to achieve something, e.g. economic security in life. The students expected the nursing career to promote their personal growth, give possibilities to gain expertise and a professional position in nursing and to achieve personal goals in life. Knowledge of nursing students' orientations to nursing can be used in evaluating how nursing programmes promote students' professional development and the quality of learning nursing. The challenges posed by the students' different orientations to nursing education are discussed.

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