The influence of the hidden curriculum on professional socialisation of student nurses in a military nursing context

Abstract

The South African Military Health Service (SAMHS) Nursing College offers a four-year integrated nursing programme leading to registration as a professional nurse at the South African Nursing Council (SANC). Student nurses assume a dual role when entering the SAMHS to commence with nurse training – that of a soldier and a nurse. Because student nurses have to assume dual roles, hidden aspects of military culture may influence the professional socialisation of student nurses in one way or another. With a view to determining whether the military environment does indeed impose any influence on student nurses’ professional socialisation, this study set out to explore the multifaceted context in which these students find themselves. Given the organisational and locational complexity of the SAMHS Nursing College, its campuses and the three military hospitals in South Africa, the population was narrowed down to an accessible target population comprising nurse educators and student nurses of the SAMHS Nursing College (Main Campus). Included in the two samples were nurse educators at the SAMHS Nursing College who had at least three years’ experience as nurse educators and who were registered with the SANC as nurse educators, and student nurses registered at the SANC for the fouryear Integrated Nursing Programme and who were in their fourth year of training. A qualitative constructivist grounded theory study was conducted based on the researcher’s philosophical assumptions. The researcher made use of focus groups and critical-incident narratives to collect data. In keeping with the constructivist paradigm adopted for this study, Charmaz’s (2014) data-analysis approach was followed. Concepts derived from the qualitative data were used to develop a substantive model to create an awareness of the existence of a hidden curriculum, to guide role players through the impact of the hidden curriculum on students’ professional socialisation and to help them to understand how their contribution could improve the outcome of the professional socialisation process