Professional Socialization in Nursing, Essay Example

What is educational and professional socialization of nurses into professional practice?

Professional socialization is generally the process through which professionals acquire the specialized attitudes, values, knowledge, skills, norms, and interests required for the performance of their professional duties acceptably (Geraldine, 1987). There are interacting domains of professional self-growth defined as outcomes of the real socialization process including self-image, values, role concept, attitudes, and personality. Geraldine (1987) wrote that, no defined framework exists for use in studying socialization. Though there has been a sociological model developed in the late 1960s, it still has not received empirical support in nursing.

How might economic factors, social trends, and new practice options affect the profession of nursing?

The process of professional socialization integrates effective and cognitive domains of performance in the professional field. The process is also a learning process effectively taking place in a social field holding the learner as an integral part of it. Therefore, the social field has major disparities in the social trends, economic factors and new practice that bring in different effects to particular individuals. The factors affect the domains of self-growth either boosting or bringing down the growth of an individual in the particular professional field (Kay, 2007).

There are five domains of self-growth in the professional field including role concepts, values, attitudes and personality (Geraldine, 1987). The profession of nursing is holds individuals who succumb to external influences on a daily basis. Faculty, students and educational settings are the main intervening variables in the learning process. The three intervening variables are subject to effect from the social trends, new practice and economic factors resulting to an effect in professional socialization either negatively or positively depending on the individual perception. This leads ultimately to an effect in the performance and learning of individuals in the nursing profession (Mooney, 2007).

References

Geraldine, E. (1987). Professional Socialization in Nursing: Annual Research in Nursing Education Conference Annual Research in Nursing Education Conference: San Francisco, CA, January 14-16, 1987

Kay, C. & Beth, P. (2007). Professional Nursing Concepts & Challenges. New York: Elsevier Science.

Mooney, M. (2007). Professional socialization: the key to survival as a newly qualified nurse. International journal of nursing practice, 2007-Apr; V 13 (issue 2): pp 75-80.