Abstract:
A convenience sample of twenty registered nurses was
recruited from two' general hospitals and two community college
nursing schools. Kelly's (1955) Personal Construct Theory
provided the theoretical framework to discover how nurses
perceived themselves as educators. The nurses completed a
self-administered Self-Perception Inventory (Soares, 1983) to
determine their perception of self as nurse and ideal self as
nurse. In an interview, each of the nurses constructed a
rank-order repertory grid adapted from Kelly's (1955) Role
Repertory Construct Test. Twelve constructs derived from the
Self-Perception Inventory (Soares, 1983) were ranked according
to a list of ten elements common to a teaching situation.
Rank order correlations among the constructs were determined
with Spearman's rho.
Using a dependent samples t-test, significant differences
were found between perceptions of current and ideal self for
staff nurses. Significant differences were also found between
nurse educators' perceptions of self and ideal self as nurse.
No significant differences were determined in perceptions of
self as nurse and ideal self as nurse between the staff nurse
and nurse educator groups with an independent samples t-test.
However, observations of single constructs revealed that
although several constructs are shared between the groups in the perception of self in a teaching situation, both groups
hold constructs that operate exclusively in their separate
domains. The nature and strength of the relationships between
the common and unique constructs are different for each group.
Nurses I self-perceptions appear to be influenced by the
historical development of nursing, role socialization during
nursing education, social expectations and gender issues in
the health care system.
