Canadian Baccalaureate Nurses Transition to the Local Health Care Environment in Qatar
Abstract
New graduate nurses are faced with numerous challenges when they enter the health care environment after completing their degrees in nursing. This study explored the challenges faced by Canadian degree nurses educated at the Canadian University’s Qatar campus. Four key conceptual areas—professionalism in nursing, transition from student to working nurse, adult education in nursing, and the theory–practice gap in nursing—were deemed to have an impact on the transition experience of graduate nurses into the local health care environment in Qatar.
This study employed a mixed-methods approach and was based on Creswell’s (2009) Concurrent Embedded Design, which is characterized by the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data simultaneously. There were two main clusters of participants. The graduates from 2010 and 2011, designated as Cohort One, were all full-time students who had diplomas in nursing prior to entering university. The second group, designated Cohort Two, included the graduates from 2012 and 2013, and was composed of full- and part-time post-diploma nurses returning to work, as well as full-time four-year degree graduates who were entering the workforce for the first time. Findings indicated that the transition period whereby graduate nurses entered the local health care environment was fraught with multiple challenges. Findings suggested not only that the transition from student to working nurse is challenging in general, but also that Qatar’s unique multicultural health care environment specifically led to exceptionally challenging experiences for graduate nurses.
Two new models—The Pearls of Wisdom Induction Model, which is specific to Qatar, and The Pearls of Wisdom Expanded Nursing Orientation Model, which is more generic and applicable to health care organizations anywhere in the world—were developed as a direct result of the findings from this study. These two models emerged as a possible means to address the challenges faced by new graduate nurses.
Description
Keywords
Education--Adult and Continuing
Citation
Clark, S. (2016). Canadian Baccalaureate Nurses Transition to the Local Health Care Environment in Qatar (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25197