Identities and roles through clinician-educator transitions: A systematic narrative review

To synthesise the literature exploring nurse and other clinicians' conceptualisations and experiences of roles and identities as they transition to educator positions and to identify facilitators/barriers to, and consequences of, successful transitions.

A systematic narrative review of empirical research reporting clinician-educator transitions was conducted from database inception to December 2020.

Our search employed ERIC, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, Ovid MEDLINE® Plus, ERIC (ProQuest), and Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest). We used search terms and synonyms relating to 'identity', 'role' and 'transitions'.

Using the PRISMA protocol for systematic reviews, we reviewed titles and abstracts for inclusion, then used the Critical Appraisal Skills Program tool to evaluate article quality. We extracted evidence from included articles, synthesising data thematically by exploring similarities and differences between studies.

We screened 2753 articles. 23 studies (across 25 articles) matched our inclusion criteria, 20 of which included nursing clinician-educator transitions. We identified four themes describing clinician-educator transitions: (i) multiple ways of conceptualising roles and identities, (ii) clinician-educator transitions as complex, emotion-laden processes, (iii) personal, interpersonal, and organisational facilitators and barriers of clinician-educator transitions, and (iv) positive and negative consequences of clinician-educator transitions.

Our review supports deeper understandings of transition processes that can be used by organisations to better support clinicians as they adapt to their new educator roles and identities.