Abstract

Nursing candidates' overall goal is to become a professional nurse. To reach this goal, the student must graduate from an associate or baccalaureate nursing program and pass the state board, National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). Student retention in nursing programs and passing the NCLEX continue to be a problem for educational institutions throughout the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine nursing candidates' perceptions of their greatest challenges in becoming a professional nurse. Wenger's social learning systems and the community of practice comprised the conceptual framework that guided this study. The research questions pertained to nursing students' perceptions regarding the greatest challenges of becoming a professional nurse, strategies that could have helped the students, and the challenges that could be addressed by the nursing program. For this qualitative case study, nursing students from a second year Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) program and nursing students in their last semester of a License Practical Nurse (LPN) program in North Georgia were asked to participate by attending focus group interviews.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 10976857; ProQuest document ID: 2135241641. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Lee Ann Williams, EdD, MSN, RN, Associate Professor/ASN Program Director

Sigma Membership

Phi Nu

Lead Author Affiliation

Dalton State College, Dalton, Georgia, USA

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Case Study/Series

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Nursing Education, Nurse Retention, Nursing Students, Professional Challenges

Advisor

David Mathieu

Second Advisor

Scott Mertes

Third Advisor

Dimitrios Vlachopoulos

Degree

Doctoral-Other

Degree Grantor

Walden University

Degree Year

2018

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2022-11-14

Full Text of Presentation

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