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The South African Military Health Service (SAMHS) Nursing College is responsible for the education and training of student nurses in order to provide the South African National Defence Force with competent professional nurses to care for its members, their dependants as well as for operationally deployed soldiers. These students undergo six months of basic military training and six months of officer’s training prior to commencing with their nursing training. The SAMHS Nursing College currently offers a 4–year diploma course leading to registration as a general nurse, community nurse, psychiatric nurse and midwife. The theoretical as well as most of the clinical component of the nursing training take place within a military environment.
When members join the Defence Force, they leave behind a civilian culture and adopt a military culture with its own unique ethos, rules and regulations. Military nursing students are expected to adopt a third culture, that of the statutory profession which requires of them to uphold its own standards and values (Naidoo 2015).
The purpose of this presentation is to explore contradictions and challenges brought about by the issue of duality as experienced by students and nurse educators of the SAMHS Nursing College. The findings will form part of a model to guide nurse educators and professional nurses in the professional socialisation of student nurses in a military environment.
Methods:
The findings that will be discussed in this presentation formed part of a constructivist grounded theory study that was done to explore the nature of the hidden curriculum within a military teaching and learning environment and to determine its significance and influence on the professional socialisation of student nurses. Data were collected by means of focus groups with students as well as nurse educators of the SAMHS Nursing College.
Results:
Findings revealed that the contextual environment in which these students are trained, imply that they are being socialised into two professions simultaneously, that of becoming a professional soldier as well as a professional nurse. The participants focussed on issues related to these two professions to the extent that duality emerged as a prominent theme during data analysis.
Significant is the fact that more contradictory than augmenting accounts were revealed during the interviews. It became evident that the dual expectations by virtue of being a military nurse leads to professional ambivalence between being a nurse or a soldier, a carer or combatant, and creates various challenges for nursing students and nurse educators alike.
Conclusion:
The culture and climate of the military fosters an expectation that all uniformed members of the military should live and perform as a soldier. For the military nurse, this expectation provides pressure to incorporate the professional nurse identity into the identity of a soldier. These professional identities differ from each other in so many ways that one has to question whether serving in both professions at the same time is conducive to the professional socialisation of military student nurses (Chamberlin 2013)?
One has to recognise that the phenomenon of duality amongst military nurses may be dictated by circumstances for example during training, conflict or peace time. To curb the confusion caused by the contradictions found during the study, students and nurse educators should utilise established medical ethical guidelines and human rights laws as moral and legal compasses and apply these in for example roleplay activities where students can learn to clarify their roles and act accordingly.