National Study of Nursing Faculty and Administrators' Perceptions of Professional Identity in Nursing.

BACKGROUND: Establishing a professional identity in nursing is integral to professional development, yet this area of inquiry remains understudied. PURPOSE: This segment of a multiphased national study measured nursing faculty's perceived level of importance regarding key components of professional identity in nursing using the newly developed Professional Identity in Nursing Survey (PINS). METHODS: Fifty subject matter experts from nursing education, practice, and regulation utilized the DeVellis scale development process to develop the PINS over the course of 2 years. Nearly 1200 nurse educators evaluated the importance of a 34-item scale relating to professional identity in nursing. RESULTS: At endorsement of 95% or greater, 28 items were found to be important components of nursing identity. Effective communication, integrity, and being trustworthy and respectful were reported as most important to nursing identity. CONCLUSIONS: Nurse educators identified the important items to assess professional identity in nursing. Item refinement and psychometric evaluation of the survey are the next phase of the multiphased study.

Do Uncivil Nursing Students Become Uncivil Nurses? A National Survey of Faculty.

BACKGROUND: Faculty frequently express anecdotal concerns that poorly behaving nursing students will go on to behave poorly as licensed nurses. Unfortunately, no empirical evidence exists to support or refute these concerns. AIM: The purpose of this study was to determine what knowledge faculty have of poorly behaving nursing students who also behaved poorly in subsequent practice. METHOD: A cross-sectional, descriptive design using online survey methods was used to gather data from a national sample of nurse educators. RESULTS: Approximately 37 percent of respondents reported having personal knowledge of a former poorly behaving student who went on to display poor behavior as a licensed provider; 71 percent reported that at least one student had graduated in the previous year whom they thought should not have graduated based on unprofessional behaviors. CONCLUSION: Study findings provide troubling evidence that at least some poorly behaving students continue to demonstrate unprofessional behavior as licensed nurses.

Advance Care Planning in Rural Montana: Exploring the Nurse's Role.

It is recommended that advance care planning take place across the lifespan. Rural populations have a heightened risk for poor quality and high cost of end-of-life care. A doctoral project was completed to assess rural nurses' knowledge, attitudes, and experiences with advance directives using the Knowledge, Attitudinal, and Experimental Surveys on Advance Directives. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis. Participants were nurses who practice in rural settings (N = 22). The average age was 46.4 years; all were white (n = 22), and the majority were baccalaureate prepared (n = 12). Practice settings were primarily in home care and hospice. Knowledge scores on advance directives were low (57%). Nurses felt confident in counseling and initiating discussions with patients and families. Less than one-half of the nurses reported they feel part of the advance care planning team. The majority reported advance directive resources and mentorship of younger nurses would be beneficial and indicated the need for additional education, training, knowledge, time, and support to better assist with advance care planning. Project results and recommendations were presented to the participating health care organization. Recommendations included workplace education, support, mentorship, resources, and education on cultural sensitivity using the rural nursing theory.

Incivility in nursing: the connection between academia and clinical settings.

Incivility and bullying in nursing are complex problems that have garnered much attention in recent years. Emerging evidence suggests that incivility in the workplace has significant implications for nurses, patients, and health care organizations. Because today's students are tomorrow's colleagues, conversations regarding how to address incivility and bullying should include specific aspects of nursing academia and the preparation of new nurses.

The effects of student incivility on nursing faculty.

In this study, 21 nursing faculty who experienced uncivil encounters with nursing students were interviewed to determine what effects those encounters had on them. The uncivil encounters ranged from relatively mild to highly aggressive, including overt threats to the faculty members' well-being. The effects of the uncivil encounters on the nursing faculty involved were significant and included both short-term and long-term sequelae, such as physical and emotional reactions, decreased self-esteem, loss of confidence in their teaching abilities, significant time expenditures, and negative effects on the educational process. Three faculty members left nursing education and cited their interactions with students as an influential factor.

Developing a scholarship community.

PURPOSE: To report the results of a multidisciplinary, interinstitutional writing support group established to facilitate faculty scholarly productivity. ORGANIZING CONCEPT: The road to scholarship can be filled with many obstacles, among them time constraints, teaching and meeting demands, student needs, office interruptions, and lack of colleagueship. The problems associated with lack of colleagueship, in particular, can be compounded for faculty who work in isolated contexts with few, if any, senior faculty to serve as mentors. METHODS OF DEVELOPMENT: The Western Writers Coercion Group evolved over a 2-year period from a small group of nursing faculty at a single institution to include, by its second year, 21 faculty from five western university campuses and three academic disciplines. The group met biweekly via teleconference with the objectives of defining and accomplishing realistic individual scholarship goals and providing a forum for the critical exchange of ideas. RESULTS: The ongoing support and mentoring of the group led to significant writing outcomes in the form of manuscripts submitted for publication, abstracts submitted for conference presentation, grant proposals developed, and collegial relationships formed. DISCUSSION: Although the benefits of group participation varied somewhat for faculty at different points in the career trajectory, they seemed to accrue at all levels of development. Group members underscored the many less quantifiable advantages of group participation: exposure to broader professional perspectives, the formation of key professional relationships, the enrichment of multidisciplinary input, and individualized assistance with time management, goal setting, and actual drafts. CONCLUSIONS: The structure and experience of this group, which continues to meet regularly, might be a model to guide other groups of scholars who face geographic isolation and who struggle with balancing time and work and finding motivation for the process of writing.

Faculty encounters with uncivil nursing students: an overview.

The critical incident technique (CIT) was used to explore faculty experiences with uncivil nursing students. Twenty-one nursing faculty with various years of experience in teaching were interviewed to ascertain what they considered critical incidents of uncivil encounters with nursing students and what effect those encounters had on them. Thirty-six encounters were described by the faculty. Of the 36 encounters, 33 occurred with individual students and 3 occurred with groups of students. Twenty-three encounters occurred in the context of poor student performance requiring constructive criticism or resulting in course failure. A battlefield metaphor is used to describe the incidents, their antecedents, and their consequences. The encounters were precipitated by a period of escalating tensions and effort by the faculty to diffuse the situation. The faculty were surprised and caught off guard by the encounters, which ranged in severity from mild to highly aggressive. The faculty often perceived significant threats to well-being of self, loved ones, job security, and/or possessions. The aftermath of the encounters included physical and emotional tolls on faculty, decreased self-esteem and loss of confidence in teaching ability, significant time expenditures, and negative consequences to the educational process. Three of the faculty left teaching in part due to encounters with students.