A Narrative Approach to Understanding the Experience of Becoming and Being a Nurse: Professional Identity Formation and Transition to Practice

A global nursing shortage was declared decades before the COVID-19 pandemic but has since been exacerbated, with little relief in sight (Turale & Nantsupawat, 2021). The World Health Organization (2022) estimates a shortage of 9 million nurses by the year 2030, while the International Council of Nurses (2021) projects this number could be as high as 13 million. Registered nurses (RNs) ages 26 to 35 have indicated a desire to leave the profession at a rate four times that reported pre-pandemic (Hooper, 2023; Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, 2021). Understanding the experiences of new nurses poses relevant implications for both practice and educational settings, specifically pertaining to the critical need to recruit, prepare, and retain new nurses. As nursing students transition into the roles of new graduate nurses, they undergo a period of personal and professional transformation as they form a professional identity. Supporting the formation of professional identity in new nurses is essential in maintaining job satisfaction, which in turn impacts retention within their role and the workforce at large (Fitzgerald, 2020). Insight into the new graduate experience can have transformative benefits for individual nurses establishing their professional identities, along with the institutions that educate and prepare them, and those aspiring to recruit and retain them in an increasingly competitive workforce. The objective of this study was to clarify the understanding of professional identity formation in new graduate nurses and its implications for recruitment and retention.