The class of BSN 1959: Education, careers and life.

Abstract

Aim: To document, over sixty-eight years from 1956 to 2023, the educational experiences and life choices of forty women in a Canadian baccalaureate nursing program. The longitudinal research spans initial expectations, the educational process, the commitment to a moral culture, the phase of marriage and domesticity, the ultimate choice of careers and culminating in decisions about the profession.

Background: Studies of baccalaureate nursing students has not linked early imaginings to education and its difficulties, or to later life and careers.

Design: The longitudinal focus covers six decades. Methodologically and theoretically, it is phenomenological and symbolic interactionist, focusing on the perspectives of the nurses as an interactive aggregate.

Methods: The work employs qualitative methods with recorded structured and unstructured interviews, informal group discussions, focus groups and ethnographic fieldwork in the training hospital, in the nurses' residence and other venues. The quantitative work involves questionnaires at selected times during their education and later lives.

Results: Traditional plans such as marriage and domesticity, the expected career for nurses, is altered. Attrition of half of the class from the profession is documented. The choices of types of nursing careers and careers in alternate fields are discussed.

Conclusion: Within the context of sixty-eight years of social and ideological change, the research considers a class of nurses from their earliest career plans to final commitments. It highlights the historical options in women's lives, in nursing education and in careers.