New Graduate Identity: Discursive mismatch
Helen Hamilton
PP: 67
Abstract
For many new graduates the transition from nursing student to a professional in practice is marked by conflict and tension. Given that conflict may ensue from differing discursive constructions of new graduates, this article reports a review of discursive construction between new graduates from two institutions with vested interests in nursing graduates - comparing health service organisations and educational institutions in Victoria.
Four discourses, common to both sets of texts and constitutive of new graduate identity were identified: these were the discourse of nursing practice; the discourse of the good nurse; the discourse of knowing and thinking; and the discourse of statute and regulation. A discourse peculiar to health service organisations only was identified as an organisational and bureaucratic discourse.
This review reports the new graduate, as constructed in education texts, as a rational, independent, critically thinking and knowing care giver. In contrast, in health service organisation texts, the new graduate is constructed as a functional, efficient, organisational operative, providing a nursing service. New graduates are concluded to experience multiple discursive dissonances in their first employment which stem from differing constructions of new graduate identity within institutional discourses. If tensions experienced in the transition as discursively generated are understood, previously unthought of ways for preparing and introducing nurses to the work place may ensue.
Keywords
new graduates, transition to work, discourse, post structuralism, preparation of nurses, education institutions, health service organisations
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