Registered Nurses Breaking into the Political Arena: A Qualitative Study

Purpose: The necessity for nurses to cultivate confidence for becoming an active member of a board or seeking election to governing boards dictates that skills, attitudes and behaviors are identified. Embracing the expectation for nurses to strengthen their political involvement compels the need to identify the trends, attitudes, recommendations, and role expectations.  A study was completed to understand which skills and attitudes are founded within the nursing role which can be further developed to showcase the nurse as an active, engaged member of a governing board. 

Methods: This study utilized a qualitative study to allow for persistent comparison of the information.  A snowball sampling method was employed to identify 10 nurses who currently serve as an elected board member or have served within the last 5 years.  Each interview was recorded.

Results: Each researcher was given a complete set of the transcribed interviews without any identifiers.  All of the data from the study was reported in the aggregate only.     Narrative pedagogy was used to embrace the written and/or spoken word to explore the aspects and trends associated with this phenomena. 

Conclusion: Through the use of inductive and interpretive review of the materials, the researcher identified specific words, phrases, and elements which were organized to allow the refinement of the themes and issues identified. This presentation will present the research process along with the key ideas that provide insight from the interviewees for use by nurses who are considering seeking increased political engagement.