Poster Presentation
Friday, July 13, 2007
9:30 AM - 10:15 AM
Friday, July 13, 2007
3:15 PM - 4:00 PM
The dissatisfactory experiences and adaptation strategies of new graduate nurses in Taiwan
Mei-Ling Wu, MSN, RN, School of Nursing, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA
| Learning Objective #1: understand the dissatisfactory experiences and its consequences of new graduate nurses in their first empirical year. |
| Learning Objective #2: identify the adaptation strategies in each adaptation stage developed by new graduate nurses in a critical care hospital. |
The purpose of this study was to explore the dissatisfactory working experiences and the related impacts on career development and adaptation strategies developed by Taiwanese registered nurses with bachelor degree during their first empirical year. This study used face-to-face semi-structured interviews to collect data. Data were analyzed by qualitative content analysis methods. Twenty participants worked in a medical center in Taiwan enrolled in this study. They were all unmarried, and only one male included. The dissatisfactory experiences included lacking of positive identification of professional progress, insufficient profession competence and discontented performance, health concerns, and worries about potential medical confrontations. The factors contributing to their sense of dissatisfaction were inadequate profession competency and clinical experiences, lacking harmony interpersonal relationship, work overload, and insufficient support. As a result, these experiences leaded to low grade of profession identification, unsatisfied caring quality, without quality of life. The further impact of their perceptions was losing vision toward future nursing career. Three stages of adaptation identified during first year was chaos, clarification, and reconfirmation stage. The mission of chaos stage of was to gain the power of controlling nursing works. The following stage of clarification was to gain more power of controlling nursing works and mastering the balance between work and personal lives. The goal of third stage was to re-assure the certainty toward nursing professionalism. Different missions in every stage induced different coping strategy accordingly. In Taiwan, efforts from faculty members, students themselves and clinical coaches are needed to prepare BSN students to achieve smooth transition from school to hospital. Learning the contexts framing their dissatisfactory experiences and adaptation strategies in the first empirical year would reinforce the health administrators and nurse educators to establish efficient orientation program and help the novice RNs to develop stage-specific strategies to adapt nursing challenges.