Embracing Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Dissonance: A Conceptual Framework to Guide the Transition to Practice.

Abstract

Background: While there is extensive literature about resilience among nursing students, less is understood about students' experiences of ambiguity, uncertainty, and dissonance.

Method: Theoretical linkages underpin a framework for embracing ambiguity, uncertainty, and dissonance in clinical learning environments as transformative experiences that can positively impact the transition to practice.

Results: A conceptual framework to guide students in their feelings of ambiguity, uncertainty, and dissonance as they transition to professional nursing practice is provided for nurse educators. The framework consists of four themes: capacity to persist with discomfort, composition of learning environments, dissonance as transformative, and crisis of ordinariness. Findings indicate that ambiguity, uncertainty, and dissonance can be transformative experiences. Reflective learning can enable students to embrace rather than resist these feelings.

Conclusion: Feelings of ambiguity, uncertainty, and dissonance can be transformed into opportunities for growth to develop students' readiness, capacity, and perseverance as they transition to practice. The professional readiness of nurses is frequently tied to ameliorating issues of ambiguity by defining and preparing nurses according to professional-readiness outcomes, uncertainty through theory-to-practice instruction, and dissonance with self-care and resilience coping skills. There is little research on nursing students' capacity to embrace feelings of ambiguity, uncertainty, and dissonance despite the tendency to try to resolve these feelings as they care for patients.