How nurses in acute care experience professional pride: a qualitative study

Professional pride is considered a positive emotion toward one's occupation. To date, there has been little research on professional pride among nurses, and the construct - including its defining characteristics, sources, and influencing factors - is still poorly understood.

Our study aimed to explore how German nurses in acute care experience professional pride, including its sources and influencing factors, and the situations in which it arises.

Qualitative interpretative study using data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with a purposive sample of nurses working in a German university hospital and subsequent framework analysis.

We conducted 13 interviews with 17 nurses working in general wards, high-dependency units, and intensive care units at a German university hospital in May and June 2022. We found that the nurses experience both stable and situational professional pride and identified factors that promote and inhibit their feelings of pride. Individual pride sources include nurses' attitudes towards the profession, their knowledge and competencies, and their care activities and successes. External factors that seem to influence whether these sources can be activated and sustained in actual practice include societal and organizational factors as well as workplace acknowledgement and appreciation. Especially nurses' implicit and explicit evaluations of care and treatment episodes seem to play a central role for their experience of professional pride.

Based on our data, we developed a preliminary conceptional model of nurses' professional pride as well as a working definition of this construct. Our findings can be used as a basis for future research which should focus on the transferability of the conceptual model to other settings and regions. Further research should also aim to develop psychometrically robust instruments to measure nurses' professional pride and assess the effects of targeted interventions.

A qualitative study that provides a preliminary conceptual model of nurses' professional pride and proposes a working definition.