Supporting student nurse professionalisation: The role of the clinical teacher Janie Brown ⁎, John Stevens, Stephen Kermode School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Australia summary article info Article history: Accepted 14 August 2011 Keywords: Student nurse Clinical teacher Professional socialisation Qualitative This paper reports aspects of the findings from the qualitative component of a mixed methods research study that investigated the role of the Clinical Teacher in student nurse professional socialisation. Graduates and Clin- ical Teachers were interviewed to identify the domains where the support of a Clinical Teacher was crucial in the students' development of a professional identity. Emergent themes were clustered into seven (7) domains as fol- lows: Professional role concept; Acculturation; Acquisition of Knowledge; Acquisition of Skill; Acquisition of Pro- fessional Values; Assimilation into the Organisation; and a seventh domain encompassing the role model attributes of Clinical Teachers. The domains are presented alongside exemplars from the interviews, in order to illustrate the importance of the support of a Clinical Teacher. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Professional Socialisation “The beginning student's perception of nursing, as well as her view of herself and her social world are the result of her primary socialization by which she became a member of society”. It is through the process of pro- fessional socialisation that the “student nurse gradually adopts the pro- fessional perception… and erases the lay perception she bought with her” (Buckenham and McGrath, 1983, p77–78). Professional socialisa- tion is a process whereby a person gains the knowledge, skills and iden- tity that are characteristic of a profession (Becker Hentz in Masters, 2005, p100). Professional socialisation begins in the tertiary setting where the student nurse is undertaking their education and continues in the workplace as a resocialisation process (Hood and Leddy, 2006). Background According to the Australian Nursing Federation “The nursing and midwifery workforce remains under pressure so health remains under pressure. It is estimated that we are 13,000 nurses and midwives short in Australia and an estimated 40% of the workforce will be due to retire in the next 10 years” (Australian Nursing Federation-Federal Office). Today the exodus of nurses from the profession has been recog- nised and a number of strategies are being implemented in an effort to retain, and recruit nurses, at the bedside. The creation of Health Work- force Australia “addresses workforce planning, policy and research; clinical education; innovation and reform of the health workforce; and the recruitment and retention of international health professionals” (Health Workforce Australia, 2010). Australian nurse education has for the last 20 years been provided solely through the tertiary sector. Cohen in her text The Nurses Quest for a Professional Identity asked “What is missing? What went wrong? Why are graduate nurses not more comfortable with their roles? Why do large numbers of nursing students drop out? Why do many new graduates drop out in their first year?” (Cohen, 1981, p134). The profession as a whole must consider Cohen's questions and investigate, through research, the education, management and workplace influences in an attempt to identify those causative factors, if adequate numbers of nurses are to be available to care for patient care. Determining the extent to which a clinical teacher impacts on the socialisation of neophyte nurses will provide faculty with an understand- ing of the most appropriate model of clinical practicum in Bachelor of Nursing programs. The importance of professional socialisation cannot be underestimated in a context where nursing has persistently high turnover and attrition rates. Maintaining a stable and high-functioning nursing workforce is a significant public health objective. Aim This paper presents the qualitative stage of a larger mixed methods research project. The aim of the qualitative phase of the research project was to develop an understanding of the role of the Clinical Teacher in the process of professional socialisation of student nurses as expressed/ perceived by Clinical Teachers and newly graduated registered nurses. The larger research project used this information to develop a quantita- tive survey tool to gather further data on the phenomenon of profession- al socialisation, the role of the Clinical Teacher and other socialising agents, and triangulates these findings back to the findings of the quali- tative component. Nurse Education Today 32 (2012) 606–610 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: janie.a.brown@gmail.com (J. Brown). 0260-6917/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2011.08.007 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/nedt