Nurses, Soft Skills and Power: Life Stories of Internationally Educated Nurses
Date
2020-05
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Abstract
The numbers of internationally educated nurses (IEN) who have joined the Canadian health care workforce have steadily increased since the mid-twentieth century. Much of the literature has framed their nursing knowledge, communication skills, and soft skills from a deficit perspective. Little research has been conducted on IENs and soft skills in the Canadian nursing context and in IENs’ own voices. To address this gap in the literature, this study explored IENs’ interpretations of soft skills and how IENs conform to or resist soft skills in their nursing practice in Canada. The theoretical framework included Foucault’s governmentality, pastoral power, and technologies of the self. It also used transculturation. Data were collected from IENs in Calgary, Alberta, through life story and analyzed through thematic analysis. Findings show that IENs perceive nursing procedures (hard skills) as inseparable from soft skills and soft skills as coming in packages rather than as isolated skills. They view nursing as holistic and use their transcultural knowledge and multilingual abilities to meet the needs of patients from diverse backgrounds. Findings indicate that contrary to the existing soft skills literature, IENs have sophisticated communication and interaction skills, as well as transcultural knowledge. Moreover, findings show that IENs have used their transcultural knowledge and multilingual abilities to challenge the English-only discourse in health care settings. The life stories of the IENs in this study add new perspectives for understanding the relationship between nurses, soft skills, and power. This study suggests that there is a need to find a way to recognize, value, and utilize IENs’ skills and knowledge that does not depend on the biased gatekeeping mechanisms of soft skills for certification and evaluation of nursing skills.
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Keywords
Internationally educated nurse, IEN, soft skills, governmentality, transculturation
Citation
Kim, M. M. (2020). Nurses, soft skills and power: life stories of Internationally educated nurses (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.