BECOMING COMPETENT: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY INTO ITS MEANING BY NURSING STUDENTS.
Contributors: University of Maryland, College Park.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 262
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Education.; Education, Curriculum and Instruction.
Description: The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of becoming competent as experienced by nursing students and to make visible the essential nature of the phenomenon of competence in nursing. The lived experience of nursing students in a clinical setting was the source of text to reveal meanings of a student becoming competent as both a learner and nurse. As such the meaning of becoming competent as a nurse is embedded in the wholeness of the phenomena for the nursing student.

The research methodology was interpretive. Attention was directed to events and situations which arose in a clinical educational setting for students enrolled in an associate degree nursing program. Through phenomenological reflection and hermeneutic analysis, common and uncommon meanings and understandings were revealed regarding competence.

The process of becoming competent evolves, as an upward spiral and is frequently shared with another being. The movement is nourished and energized through giving and receiving. Inherent in the meaning of becoming competent is increasing efficiency in performance and intuitive ways of knowing. A tendency exists to raise questions and to seek understanding about the world. Higher levels of competence embody caring blended with knowing and doing through commitment, understanding, and responsiveness to persons. In the process of becoming competent, persons experience an awareness of union with another. Competence as knowing and doing is possible through a caring way of being.

Anxiety and care are underlying themes pointing towards the meaning of competence. Both are also present as tensions in the power of the continuing call to nursing. To understand competence is to understand the call into nursing, the power of becoming.

Implications for curriculum are intended to build upon the foundation of meaning structures found to be the essence of the phenomenon of competence. Curriculum recommendations include providing settings where it is hoped that nursing students seek to live with the tensions and contradictions in nursing, surface new questions and levels of awareness, and strive to enhance the process of becoming competent.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-03, Section: B, page: 1196.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK, 1989.

School code: 0117.