An Examination of the Clinical Learning Experience of Second Career Nursing Students in a Dedicated Education Unit: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Controversy exists between academic leaders and nurse executives in the health care system regarding whether or not new graduates especially second-career nurses are fully prepared to provide safe and effective patient care. Nurse educators are exploring innovative methods explored to improve clinical learning outcome and to foster successful career development of these students. The purpose of the paper is to examine the experience and self-regulated learning capacities of second-career nursing students who have received clinical teaching in a Veterans Affair Hospital’s dedicated education unit in the United States. The study setting is a 20-bed cardiac telemetry unit where staff nurses are purposely assigned to clinical teaching. Kuiper’s self-regulated learning model (Kuiper, 2005), a middle-range theory derived from constructivist theory, is used as the theoretical framework of the study. 13 students were recruited from the hospital’s partnership with a second-career program. The participants were asked to answer 10 open-ended questions during two focus group sessions of 6 and 7 people respectively. The conversations were audio-taped and transcribed. The scripts were input into a qualitative research software NVivo10 for data analysis. The study provides a glimpse into the lived experience of the second-career students. It compares the findings with those of prior published studies. It concludes that the dedicated education unit has a positive impact on second-career students’ self-regulated learning experience.