Welcome to the Nursing Profession: Fostering Professionalism in New Graduates

To develop a professional identity, nursing students must have experiences with nursing beyond the everyday tasks and responsibilities of direct patient care. Benner reminds us in “Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation”, that faculty must facilitate experiences that help students begin to feel like a nurse, act like a nurse, and ultimately “be” a nurse (Benner et al., 2010, p. 16).

The National Student Nurses Association (NSNA) Annual Conference is a powerful and unique experience through which Nursing Capstone students can develop their professional identity in nursing. In 2019, the NSNA Annual Conference will be held in Salt Lake City. At the conference, Nursing Capstone students will have the opportunity to meet and network with other students, faculty, and nursing leaders from across the USA. General sessions, seminars, workshops and poster presentations will enhance their academic and clinical skills. They will also have the opportunity to network with other professionals and be introduced to possible employment opportunities at social events and in the exhibit hall. As graduating seniors they will have the opportunity to attend the NSNA/Wolters Kluwer Mini Review to increase their confidence in preparing for the NCLEX exam. They will also be introduced to the House of Delegates, where the NSNA’s policy-making body will engage state and school chapter leaders in considering resolutions and electing new officers.

Our role of the nurse educators is to create a learning environment based on “fostering professional attentiveness, responsibility and excellence … where students learn that they have the authority, not just the responsibility, to practice (Benner et al., 2010, p. 16).” Experiential learning is essential for our students to meet their full potential, and this opportunity will give our students the opportunity to grow professionally to become inspired professionals in the nursing field.

1. Nursing Capstone students were registered to attend the 67th Annual NSNA Convention on April 3-7, 2019 at the Salt Palace Convention Center. Students who are current members of the BYU Student Nurses Association (BYU-SNA) will be registered to attend all three days of the conference. Those who are not current BYU-SNA members will be registered to attend one day.
2. All Nursing Capstone students will be required to attend one day (eight hours) of the conference as part of their NURS 492 Nursing Capstone Clinical course. These hours will satisfy their course requirement for “professional hours”. Students will prove their attendance by submitting a digital photo record of their conference participation and a written reflection of their learning.
3. A pre/post evaluation of the students’ professional identity will be conducted. The Macleod Clark Professional Identity Scale for undergraduate nursing students will be used for this purpose. Students will be asked to compete the evaluation before and after attending the conference. Participation in the evaluation will be voluntary.

The Macleod Clark Professional Identity Scale (MCPIS-9) will be used to evaluate student professional growth following the conference (see attached appendix). The evaluation will be given pre/ post in order to evaluate change. The MCPIS-9 is a professional identity scale developed by Macleod Clark et al in 2006 to measure professional identity in healthcare students. It has since been validated for use with undergraduate nursing students. The evaluation consists of nine items that are ranked using a Likert response scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.