De vil gerne gøre en forskel, men…

Recruiting and retaining nurses in the profession has become increasingly challenging, and the interest in pursuing nursing education is significantly declining. In this article, we investigate the factors that motivate students to choose nursing as their field of study, as expressed in their own words, and examine what is crucial for them in terms of shaping their professional identity and envisioning a future in the profession. The analysis in this article is based on 114 self-portraits written by nursing students shortly before completing their education. The findings indicate that the nursing students are genuinely interested in the profession. They are motivated by the ambition to make a difference. However, their experiences within a healthcare system where care and nursing are under pressure present the future professionals with a difficult situation. The challenge lies in shaping their professional identity amidst the tension between ideals and a strained professional practice. One possible outcome is that the students complete their education but opt out of working as nurses. In conclusion, we argue that the healthcare system needs future nurses who dare to insist on care as a fundamental premise and as part of the nursing profession's ambition on behalf of the patient. Therefore, there is a persistent need to work on creating frameworks and conditions within the healthcare system that make this possible and that retain students in their education and later retain trained nurses in the profession

De vil gerne gøre en forskel, men…

Recruiting and retaining nurses in the profession has become increasingly challenging, and the interest in pursuing nursing education is significantly declining. In this article, we investigate the factors that motivate students to choose nursing as their field of study, as expressed in their own words, and examine what is crucial for them in terms of shaping their professional identity and envisioning a future in the profession. The analysis in this article is based on 114 self-portraits written by nursing students shortly before completing their education. The findings indicate that the nursing students are genuinely interested in the profession. They are motivated by the ambition to make a difference. However, their experiences within a healthcare system where care and nursing are under pressure present the future professionals with a difficult situation. The challenge lies in shaping their professional identity amidst the tension between ideals and a strained professional practice. One possible outcome is that the students complete their education but opt out of working as nurses. In conclusion, we argue that the healthcare system needs future nurses who dare to insist on care as a fundamental premise and as part of the nursing profession's ambition on behalf of the patient. Therefore, there is a persistent need to work on creating frameworks and conditions within the healthcare system that make this possible and that retain students in their education and later retain trained nurses in the profession

Kohærens og professionel identitet: Et begrebsapparat, som kan styrke professionsuddannelser?

It is a persistent challenge for professional education programs to create meaningful connections, where the knowledge content, as a premise, is heterogeneous and draws on different scientific disciplines. Based on the concept of coherence, the article discusses how professional education programs can enhance students' professional development by working with educational coherence. The perspective of the article is that the complexity of professional education programs cannot or should not be eliminated; instead, the education should bring the differences into respectful interaction and thereby support the students' own creation and experience of meaningful but contradictory connections

Forskning er forskning – også på professionshøjskolerne!

Is the applied research done at Danish university colleges conceptually ‘other’ than the research done at other research institutions? Even though research processes vary in relation to their field and the problems studied, we argue, with inspiration from John Dewey, that it is not warranted to conceptually make this demarcation

Kohærens og professionel identitet

It is a persistent challenge for professional education programs to create meaningful connections, where the knowledge content, as a premise, is heterogeneous and draws on different scientific disciplines. Based on the concept of coherence, the article discusses how professional education programs can enhance students' professional development by working with educational coherence. The perspective of the article is that the complexity of professional education programs cannot or should not be eliminated; instead, the education should bring the differences into respectful interaction and thereby support the students' own creation and experience of meaningful but contradictory connections

Networked together: designing participatory research in on-line ethnography

Abstract. This book contains the conference proceedings of the third edition of Rethinking Educational Ethnography: Researching on-line communities and interactions Conference hold in Napoli from 6th to 7th of June 2013. In 2013, the third edition of the Conference has invited ethnographers in different fields of research (not only in education), and those involved in ethnographic investigations in diverse disciplines (anthropology, sociology, etc.) to present and discuss contributions on the challenges of participatory research design in digital ethnography