Identity crisis reality of myth

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Identity crisis reality of myth?

• Stephanie Aiken
• Kingston University
• s.aiken_at_kingston.ac.uk

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The context

• Tarlier (2005) identified a disciplinary
  existential angst which drives nurses to explore
  and rationalise what nursing practice is.

• Professional identity is sustained by the
  preferred ideas of a profession and is thus
  influenced by cultural assumptions.
• Eraut (2003)
• Is nursing a paradigm in crisis?

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• one thinks of identity when one is not sure
  where one belongs (Bauman, 1996 p 19)

• identity problems mostly arise when there are
  significant differences between internal and
  external perceptions of a profession.
• (Eraut, 2006)

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Grant (2007) offers some useful questions

• What does that identity offer me?
• How is that identity perceived by others?
• Should we maintain our identity or forge a new
  one?
• Is our identity developed or bestowed?
• Who is in control of this?

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• Nurses, more than any other health care
  professionals, are constantly being asked to
  expand, develop or simply change their role to
  fit in with the new health service.
• (Salvage, 2002 28)

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Transforming the curriculum

• A curriculum is a set of educational
  experiences organised more or less
  deliberately. (Barnett and Coate, 2005 p5)
• Modernising nursing careers setting the
  direction (DH, 2006)
• Review of pre-registration nursing education
  (NMC, 2007)

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Images of nursing
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• Currently, in the UK, nursing is dying and the
  nurses are allowingit to happen
• (Shields and Watson, 2007 p. 70)

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Research Question

• How is nursing currently perceived by the
  society it serves?

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The aims of my research are thus

• To gain insight into the perceptions of nursing
  that are held by those whom nursing professes to
  serve.
• To ascertain how individuals develop the images
  of nursing they believe to be true.
• To consider if there is a disparity between the
  perceived and real world of nursing work.

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My research position

• the focus of a piece of research is not just a
  question of what is considered, but how it is
  done. (Dunne et al 2005 p.166)
• Qualitative approach.
• Interpretivist tradition
• looks for culturally derived and historically
  situated interpretations of the social life
  world (Crotty 1998, p67).
• Emergent design

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Research design

• Stakeholder analysis
• Lay perspectives
• Media and policy influences
• Nursing community
• Semi structured interviews
• Focus groups

• Documents as data
• (texts open to a reading for meaning- Campbell,
  2004).
• Grey literature
• Media sources
• Reflective log

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I am seeking to address the following

• As the content of our culture changes over
  time, or as people enter new cultural contexts,
  they will need to read about, talk about and
  understand the new meanings they are creating or
  being offered. (Ryan, 1999 p. 496)

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To conclude

• And therein lies the dilemma what they want,
  what is good for them, is not necessarily good
  for patients. (Pepminster, 1998)