Medical discourse and professional identity in nursing

37^th Asia-Pacific Nursing and Medicare Summit

OCTOBER 20-21, 2017 OSAKA, JAPAN

Yi-Ling Lu

National United University, Taiwan

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Adv Practice Nurs

Abstract :

Nurses, when progress from the language classroom to the hospital setting, may develop certain beliefs regarding to the role of medical discourse. The aim of this study was to gain insight into nurses� perceptions of medical discourse, with a focus on how it functions in nurses� career and how its learning happens in clinical practice. Semi-structured interviews were employed in order to fulfill the research aim. The research sample was comprised of 11 Taiwanese nurses (nine females and two males). They worked in different medical centers located in north and in central Taiwan. The participants had completed their nursing studies from various nursing colleges and universities and had started their nursing career for 2-3 years. The wards where they were working can be categorized into three different attributes: Internal medicine wards, surgery wards and specialist wards. The results demonstrate that the connection with the nursing community leads nurses to develop certain beliefs regarding to the role of medical discourse. Rather than merely being a subject that does not need much effort to study as believed by nurses during their college years, medical discourse in clinical practice is a tool of socializing them into nursing profession. In addition, learning medical discourse in clinical practice generates much stronger motivation and needs for learning.

Biography :

Yi-Ling Lu is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at National United University, Taiwan. Her research interests include the evaluation of teacher effectiveness.