Paper
Sunday, November 13, 2005
This presentation is part of : Nursing Education Initiatives
Professional Resilience, Career Longevity, and Parse's Theory for Baccalaureate Education
Helen F. Hodges, RN, PhD, Ann C. Keeley, RN, MN, APRN, BC, and Elaine C. Grier, RN, MS, CCRN. Georgia Baptist College of Nursing, Mercer University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Learning Objective #1: Apply Parse's concepts of explicating meaning, synchronizing rhythms, and mobilizing transcendence as a nursing theory-based framework for guiding BSN education
Learning Objective #2: Describe Parse's work as a framework to promote professional resilience and career longevity in beginning BSN nurses

The science of nursing education benefits from using nursing theory as a basis for guiding educational practice. Specifically, Parse's human science theory provides a fitting theoretical framework for a model of teaching-learning in undergraduate baccalaureate nursing education. As a theory of dynamic human relationship, Parse's theory provides a practical framework upon which to build teaching strategies that may promote professional resilience and career longevity. Resilience is the on-going process of struggling with hardship and not giving up, a learned cluster of behaviors and perspective that can be modeled and reinforced. The foundation of professional resilience is the interpersonal push-pull of ideas that results in a lifelong professional identity and stable value system. Teaching professional survival skills is one thing educators can do to impact the nursing shortage. Engaged student-faculty interaction to explore personal meaning, develop a clear professional philosophy, and cultivate a strong professional identity, may assist new nurses to flourish professionally in acute care practice settings and may prevent their premature departure from nursing practice. Techniques and strategies are proposed, based on Parse's theory, that can foster a cumulative source of survival skills for new nurses.