Abstract

As the demand for qualified nurses increases, nursing education is responsible for preparing students for healthcare challenges. Nursing education focuses on academic success measures, including licensure examination passage, graduation rates, and grade point average. Though these outcomes are important, they fail to capture the complexities of student success. Thriving, the conceptual framework for this study, is a phenomenon within higher education that expands on the traditional measures of success and integrates cognitive and psychological aspects of the college experience. This study utilized interpretive phenomenology to understand the meanings of the lived experiences of thriving undergraduate nursing students. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants who were deemed as thriving, according to the Thriving Quotient. These participants were undergraduate students from two baccalaureate nursing programs. Five themes emerged from the data analysis: professors' investment in students, partnerships with peers, seeing success through hardships, greater purpose, and finding a balance. The study's findings add to the unique understanding of thriving among nursing students. Furthermore, the results support the call for an expansive view of success to prepare students for the nursing profession.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 28319071; ProQuest document ID: 2521471732. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Nicole M. Mentag, PhD, RN

Sigma Membership

Non-member

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Phenomenology

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Nursing Education, Thriving, Nurse Preparedness, Student Success

Advisor

Holly Evans Madison

Second Advisor

Timothy D. O'Connor

Third Advisor

Patrice K. Nicholas

Degree

PhD

Degree Grantor

Nova Southeastern University

Degree Year

2020

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

2022-02-15

Full Text of Presentation

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