Abstract

Background: Advanced nursing education needs to be pursued along the continuum of the nursing career path. This education process is indispensable to the role of the nurse as educator, manager, nurse leader, and researcher who will effect policy changes and assume leadership roles as revolutionary thinkers in addition to implementing paradigmatic shifts.

Purpose: This grounded theory study sought to unearth the critical factors that motivate nurses to advance academically. The study aimed to gain an understanding of the social processes associated with the decision of diploma and associate degree nurses to advance their nursing education.

Philosophical Underpinnings: A qualitative methodology in the tradition of grounded theory using the constructivist and interpretivist approach was used to conduct the study.

Method: Data were collected from two groups of participants using a face-to-face semistructured interview. The first group was diploma and associate degree nurses, and the second group was a focus group comprising of baccalaureate, masters, or doctoral degree nurses who have progressed academically from diploma or associate degree level.

Results: Emerging from the thick rich data that were collected from the research participants were the following core categories that ground the theory: rewarding, motivating, and supporting for diploma and associate degree nurses to advance academically.

Conclusions: The study concluded by elucidating that professional advancement was the social process that grounds. Hence, the emergent theory was; The Theory of Professional Advancement.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 10115703; ProQuest document ID: 1802920822. The author still retains copyright.s

Author Details

Rose L. McGhie-Anderson, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC, MSc, RN

Sigma Membership

Phi Pi

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Grounded Theory

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Continuing Nursing Education, Nursing Career Paths, Professional Advancement, Academic Progression, Advanced Nursing Degrees

Advisors

Chin, Claudette R.||Colin, Jessie M.||Denker, Ann-Lynn

Degree

PhD

Degree Grantor

Barry University

Degree Year

2016

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

2022-04-19

Full Text of Presentation

wf_yes

Download

Share

COinS