Returning to nursing practice: a learning journey

In response to the current shortage in the Australian nursing workforce, educational strategies that support organisational investment in nurses returning to the workforce are described. For many of these nurses, contemporary roles and responsibilities present a dramatic departure from their previous experiences. This hospital-based Return to Practice Programme described in this paper is pivotal to the integration of formal learning with current clinical practice. The programme moves away from a need to fill vacant positions to a framework that overtly values the diversity of experience and knowledge that participants bring to the workplace, focusing on a person-environment fit with opportunities for clinical practice. The programme supports nurses who are returning to practice to identify their learning needs, to refresh their theoretical knowledge for contemporary nursing care delivery and provides structured, supported practice in the clinical setting. This paper describes programme participants' learning journeys which emerged through analysis of data using interpretive phenomenology, an approach that focuses on the meaning of an experience for the individual in relation to the context in which it occurred. From the exemplars used to illustrate some of these learning experiences, educators and practioners alike may better anticipate participants' learning and support requirements thus optimising their clinical learning opportunities while maximising the number of nurses that are recruited back into the nursing workforce.