Career guidance provision for student nurses: views of health authority personnel

An investigation into career guidance in nursing is being undertaken as part of a project researching the careers of newly qualified registered general nurses. This paper focuses on an exploratory interview study of staff working in a regional health authority used for piloting. Six staff were interviewed to explore their understanding of career guidance, the guidance that they thought was available for student nurses, views about its adequacy and the rationale for its provision. Other questions explored views about how guidance could best be provided, and by whom. The paper reports on both the experience of undertaking exploratory interviews of this kind and on findings that emerged. The main methodological problem encountered was the difficulty of identifying appropriate personnel for interview. Findings revealed a lack of a common understanding of the term career guidance, lack of clarity about the responsibility for guidance, and an absence of formal policies for its provision. Despite this, however, it was thought that students did receive guidance from a variety of sources, primarily the school of nursing. A variety of ideas about the best ways of providing career guidance were postulated.