Newly graduated nurse anesthetists' experiences and views on anesthesia nursing--a phenomenographic study

This qualitative study identifies and describes different ways in which newly graduated nurse anesthetists (NAs) experience and perceive nurse anesthesia. It explains different approaches to nurse anesthesia care and, thus, to clinical nursing care (in an anesthesia and surgical context), provided by new NAs. One month after graduation, all NAs who had completed an anesthesia nursing program responded to 4 open-ended questions. A phenomenographic method was used to analyze their responses. The results were divided into 3 categories, which describe nurse anesthesia from the perspectives of (1) maintaining physical well-being; (2) being protectors and advocates; and (3) ability to perform good nurse anesthesia given all the demands placed on the NAs. The results indicate that, for the new NAs, the nurse anesthesia care situation was largely influenced by context and generated feelings of inadequacy because the NAs could not provide the emotional support that they believed their patients required.