Changing the locus of control of registered nurse students with a futuristic-oriented course

Locus of Control research has established that college students are becoming more external, and that internality is preferable. If an external locus of control is associated with poor self-esteem, alienation, depression, and "burn out" in nurses as it is with other individuals, then we need to reverse this trend. Lefcourt (1976) tells us that in the future, methods fostering internality will be crucial. Toffler (1980) says that to break out of the rigid mentality of the Second Wave, future-oriented nurses must be self-responsible. Self-responsible, internally controlled practitioners will enable themselves and the nursing profession to grow as they will anticipate and participate in the selection of the knowledge, skills, and characteristics they need to grow. The purpose of this study was to determine if a course which explores the transition into a futuristic-oriented professional nursing role would move registered nurse students in a baccalaureate program toward stronger internality. A basic pretest-intervention-post test experimental design was used and results of an analysis of covariance significantly determined the efficacy of the course in encouraging greater internality, F (3,60) = 49.55, p less than .0001.