Professional Belonging in Nursing Students: A Qualitative Research

Considering the importance of sense of belonging in the formation of professional identity and clinical experiences of nursing students, in this study, the factors involved in the sense of belonging from nursing students’ perspective were studied to promote and form this phenomenon in nursing students explaining the factors involved.
A Qualitative research design was adopted and data were collected through 15 semistructured interviews with nursing students. The recorded interviews were analyzed using content analysis. The validity of the data was evaluated using the criteria of credibility, dependability, and conformability.
The data were extracted in 2 main categories: 1- Perceived consequences which included a subset of the community acceptance, internal perspective, feedback from the instructors, viewing the results, interaction with peers, family acceptance, and learning experiences, 2- Professional relationships which included a subset of health communications, staff interpersonal communication, interpersonal communication of the students with their instructors, and student acceptance in the ward.
Considering the importance of perceived consequences and professional communications, creating a situation in which students feel they are part of the care team is of high importance. To this end, preparation and training of personnel to accept students as their future colleagues should be considered by education planners. The introduction of professional nursing in the community can play a supporting role in providing a sense of belonging in nursing students.