AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY OF ROLE CONCEPTIONS AND CAREER EXPERIENCES OF MID-LEVEL HOSPITAL NURSE ADMINISTRATORS.
Contributors: University of Texas at Austin.
Published: 1990
Number of pages: 219
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Psychology, Developmental.; Health Sciences, Health Care Management.
Description: A naturalistic, interpretive study conducted for the purpose of understanding the different ways in which mid-level hospital nurse administrators experience and interpret their work situations. Role conception and career were developed as "sensitizing" concepts to guide data collection and analysis. The major assumptions were: role conception and career are emergent phenomena that occur within a context; the act of being cannot be separated from the act of becoming; and the informant's interpretation of her lived experience is the salient reality.

A snowball method was used to locate diverse informants, whereas theoretical sampling was used to select informants and sample data. Informant selection ended when data became redundant. Nine female nurse-managers, from 37-53 years of age, with 1.5-15 years of tenure in their position, from 4 hospitals in one southwestern metropolitan area, participated in the study. Sources of data included 2 indepth, loosely structured interviews with each informant and field notes. Interview times ranged from 3.5-6.0 hours per informant. Interviews were transcribed verbatim. Categories and themes were developed through constant comparative and contextual data analysis.

The Women's Ways of Knowing model, explicated by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule (1986) and predicated on the self-in-relationship, provided a way to understand the three groups of nurse-managers that were identified. The epistemological perspectives they held were: Subjectivism, Procedurism, and Constructivism. More importantly, this model provided a way to understand their behaviors as efficacious in terms of personal development even though the behaviors might be judged as problematic in terms of their work situation or professional development. For instance, providing patient care as a nurse-manager, rather than exemplifying neediness, provided experiences of connected knowing necessary for the integration of feeling and reason. Normative and interactive models of role conception, predicated on the notion of self-in-reciprocity, were inadequate for understanding the different ways the nurse-managers experienced and interpreted their work situations.

The conclusions indicate that models of role and socialization traditionally used to study nurses and nurse administrators as well as to inform the administrative, clinical, and educational practice of nursing, need to be reconsidered in light of current findings regarding women's development.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-10, Section: B, page: 4782.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1990.

School code: 0227.