Abstract

This narrative inquiry study looked at community college nursing student repeaters, those who have failed a required nursing course and then gone on to repeat the course. Nursing student repeaters are a population at especially high risk for attrition, and about whom little is known. The community college setting is an important site of nursing education, where approximately half of new nurses do their pre-licensure schooling and where attrition is a particular problem. Fourteen nursing student repeaters were interviewed and eleven of them provided a letter of advice to a future nursing student repeater. While each participant had a unique story, common narratives emerged from the data and were presented as storylines: Repeating is an Emotional Journey, Ultimately Repeating was the Best Thing for Me, Nursing School Happens in the Midst of Life, and Nothing Can Really Prepare You for Nursing School. Two additional common themes surfaced from the stories: Finding Support From Other Repeaters and Nursing is More Than Just a Career for Me. The stories of the participants were further analyzed through the lens of Morales' theory of academic resilience. The results of this study suggest that there is a need for additional support, academic and emotional, for this population. This study adds to the literature on nursing student retention by suggesting interventions that may help nursing student repeaters achieve academic success and thus encourage nursing students to persist in school. This study also adds to the literature on Morales' theory of academic resilience by demonstrating that the theory may be applied to nursing student repeaters, a population that has not previously been studied through the perspective of this theory.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 10585377; ProQuest document ID: 1881310147. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Lisa S. Lewis, EdD, MSN, RN, CNE

Sigma Membership

Beta Epsilon

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Narrative

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Nursing Education, Failing a Course, Academic Support, Academic Success, Student Retention

Advisor

Susan Barcinas

Second Advisor

Alyssa Rockenbach

Third Advisor

Duane Akroyd

Fourth Advisor

Carol Figuers

Degree

Doctoral-Other

Degree Grantor

North Carolina State University

Degree Year

2016

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2021-12-14

Full Text of Presentation

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