THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF RETURNING REGISTERED NURSE STUDENTS: A HEIDEGGERIAN HERMENEUTICAL ANALYSIS (REENTRY WOMEN).
Contributors: University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Published: 1990
Number of pages: 300
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Adult and Continuing.
Description: This descriptive, interpretive study examined the lived experience of Registered Nurses returning to school for their baccalaureate degree in nursing. Although RNs are returning to baccalaureate education in large numbers, little research has been conducted from the students' points of view regarding what they find meaningful about their experiences. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to unveil common meanings embedded in the experience of returning to school in order to reveal new possibilities for curriculum and instruction which would enhance learning.

Returning RNs from three baccalaureate nursing programs (N = 15) participated in extended, nonstructured interviews. The taped interviews were transcribed and the resulting texts were analyzed hermeneutically using Heideggerian phenomenology as the philosophical background to identify common meanings, relational themes across texts and, finally, constitutive patterns expressing relationships between themes.

Heideggerian hermeneutical analyses carried out in a seven-stage process by a team of researchers revealed nine relational themes and one constitutive pattern. The constitutive pattern "Nursing As A Way Of Thinking" emerged as the major finding of the research. This pattern describes transformations in their approaches to learning and how these returning RNs (RRNs) could not separate their nursing practice from their learning; meaningful learning experiences were viewed through the lens of nursing experience. Nursing had become a way of thinking, not something one "did"; new understandings opened up because of nursing experience. Returning to school from the context of nursing practice disclosed new possibilities for understanding the nature of thinking, schooling, and nursing. In all its nuances, "Nursing As A Way Of Thinking" means that understanding the world and others opens up because nursing experience has transformed the path of thinking/learning.

Two relational themes emerged: "Schooling For Oppression" and "Harbingers of Entry Into Practice"; these describe how the contested ideology of professionalism within the issue of continued education was used to prescribe the thoughts, values, and behavior of the RRNs. When the RRNs' oppression was viewed in conjunction with the powerful new possibilities for understanding which emerged in the context of their education, the dialectical tension in their baccalaureate experience became visible.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-04, Section: B, page: 1747.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON, 1990.

School code: 0262.