The price of journeying towards the prize-Commencing nursing students' experiences of working and studying: A qualitative study.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To explore the experiences of commencing first-year undergraduate nursing students who were studying full time while engaging in 20 or more hours of paid work each week. METHOD: Using a qualitative exploratory design, commencing full-time nursing students who were employed in paid work for at least 20 hr per week were interviewed between May-June 2016. Data were thematically analysed using the following approach: data familiarisation, generating initial codes independently, searching and reviewing themes and subthemes, and defining and naming these themes and subthemes. RESULTS: Four main themes were identified which illustrated students' experiences of working and studying: (a) "Work is a necessity…not a choice" identified how students relied heavily on the financial income from paid work to support themselves and others during their studies, (b) "Something's got to give" highlighted the sacrifices that needed to be made to avoid negative effects on their studies, (c) "It's a balancing act!" demonstrated how students studied strategically and balanced their workload despite challenges, and lastly (d) "Being supported to work and study" described the overwhelming support from others for students to succeed academically. CONCLUSIONS: Despite support, working 20 hr or more per week while studying full time often overwhelmed students' personal resources and negatively impacted on course grades. Inflexible University timetables compounded the challenges experienced by students who struggled to balance work and study commitments. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Nursing employers play a pivotal role in enabling students to juggle effectively their work-study commitments, through providing work flexibility. Students may also benefit if the nursing workforce advocates that they be awarded exclusion from selected clinical placement requirements, particularly if the clinical placement focus is closely related to their current nursing employment.

Language support improves oral communication skills of undergraduate nursing students: A 6-month follow-up survey.

BACKGROUND: With the widening of participation in higher education, it is essential in the discipline of nursing that students are able to communicate proficiently to deliver quality patient care. However, undergraduate students can experience significant difficulties with spoken communication critical to professional nursing, which places them 'at risk' of failure during the nursing course. OBJECTIVES: To examine the relationship between students' use of academic literacy support and oral communication skills. DESIGN: Prospective, correlational survey design. SETTING: A large multi-campus university in Western Sydney, Australia. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 1699 assessment ratings of first and second year nursing students were completed at both baseline and at the 6-month follow-up in 2015. METHODS: The CLIP index was embedded as an assessment requirement in four clinical skills-based units and assessed at the end of each semester in the first two years of the Bachelor of Nursing program. In this study, first and second year students were assessed in Semester 1 at baseline and also six months later in Semester 2. RESULTS: From Semester 1 to Semester 2, the mean CLIP scores improved from 15.8 (SD: 3.7) to 17.2 (SD: 3.3) and all four components of the mean CLIP index improved. The smallest improvement was in the area of pronunciation while the lexical component had the greatest improvement. In addition, students who attended an academic literacy consultation or workshop for oral language support were over 1.5 times more likely to achieve an improvement in CLIP score (AOR: 1.58, 95% CI: 1.26 to 1.98). CONCLUSION: The CLIP tool can be used to track and monitor students' oral language skills over the course of their study, and identify 'at risk' students requiring additional support through on-campus language support programs.