A National Qualitative Study of Work-Life Balance in Prelicensure Nursing Faculty.

AIM: This study explored how full-time, prelicensure baccalaureate nursing faculty members described their experiences with work-life balance. BACKGROUND: With increasing shortages of nursing faculty and practicing nurses, schools of nursing are developing faculty recruitment and retention efforts. It is imperative to understand the experiences of nursing faculty with regard to balancing their work and personal lives. METHOD: A web-based survey including two open-ended questions related to work-life balance was disseminated to deans of nursing programs, who disseminated the survey to nursing faculty. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. RESULTS: The sample (n = 320) was representative of current nursing faculty demographics. Three themes emerged: Relationship With Administration, Nursing Faculty Workload, and Boundary Setting. Opposing subthemes were noted in each theme. CONCLUSION: Administrators may use the findings from this study to create administrator and faculty development opportunities and mentorship programs that promote work-life balance of nursing faculty.

Career persistence in baccalaureate-prepared acute care nurses.

PURPOSE: To explain how baccalaureate-prepared acute care nurses understand, adapt to, and negotiate challenge and change in acute care settings in the context of social and structural features and consequently develop career persistence there. DESIGN: Grounded theory method based on the research of Strauss and Corbin. METHODS: A research team conducted open-ended interviews with a theoretic sample of 19 new and experienced baccalaureate-prepared (BSN) nurses in the southeast United States during 2007 and 2008 until saturation was achieved. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Constant comparative method was used to analyze data to three increasingly abstract levels culminating in theory emergence. A diagram was developed to better understand relationships and processes. FINDINGS: A central category, building professional resilience, emerged as the central social process with three core processes of verifying fit, stage setting, and optimizing the environment contributing to career persistence in acute care. Core processes include skills and practices nurses have learned to negotiate changing acute care environments while sustaining patient advocacy. Definitions, properties, and dimensions of each were established. CONCLUSIONS: The study offers a systematic framework for understanding and promoting career persistence for acute care nurses. Findings broaden theories of resilience to the unique settings of acute care nursing and further extend theoretical understanding of the nursing shortage and market issues of supply and demand. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: A middle range theory of professional resilience and career persistence makes visible skills and practices acute-care nurses use to weather continuous change and challenge in health care. Teachable practices can be integrated into nursing education and staff development to improve professional career longevity of experienced nurses at the bedside.

Professional resilience in baccalaureate-prepared acute care nurses: first steps.

New nurses typically begin their practice in acute care settings in hospitals, where their work is characterized by time constraints, high safety risks for patients, and layers of complexity and difficult problems. Retention of experienced nurses is an issue central to patient safety. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the nature of professional resilience in new baccalaureate-prepared nurses in acute care settings and to extrapolate pedagogical strategies that can be developed to support resilience and career longevity. Findings revealed a common process of evolving resilience among participants. New nurses spend a significant amount of time learning their place in the social structure. With positive experiences, they begin to feel more competent with skills and relationships and become increasingly aware of discrepancies between their ideas of professional nursing and their actual experiences in the work setting. The risk of new nurses leaving their practice is constantly present during these struggles. Acceptable compromises yield a reconciliation of the current crisis, typically occurring long after formal precepting has ended. Personal growth is evident by the evolving clarity of professional identity, an edifying sense of purpose, and energy resources to move forward. For new nurses, professional resilience yields the capacity for self-protection, risk taking, and moving forward with reflective knowledge of self.