The Patient – in Shaping the Professional Identity of the Future Nurse

Abstract

Understanding how nurses are constructing their professional identity can be the first step for a better training for the students in nursing. The clinical practice is exploited mostly for its technical skills development. Listening to the stories of the future nurses from the clinical practice is a way understand the huge potential of resources for learning. Students in nursing are entering the clinical practice with some expectations and values which are challenged during their experience in the medical environment by many factors, one of the most important being the patient. Together, with fear of error associated with the responsibility of the nurse profession, identifying strategies of preferred identities constructions, in relationship with the personal values identified as significant and with the rejected professional identities, lead the future nurse to reach professional preferred identities associated with socially desirable behaviors highlighted and validated by patient contribution.