Commentary: Transition to Practice: Future Considerations for New Graduate Nurses.

There is a growing concern in education and healthcare that we are not adequately preparing or transitioning newly graduated nurses (NGNs) into the workplace. Several studies over the past decade have revealed relationships between the mental health of NGNs and their experience of the workplace environment. Even before the destabilizing impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, overwhelming workload intensities were forcing nurses to become organizational task masters and crisis facilitators rather than clinical case managers and direct-care providers.

Transition shock: the initial stage of role adaptation for newly graduated registered nurses.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework of the initial role transition for newly graduated nurses to assist managers, educators and seasoned practitioners to support and facilitate this professional adjustment appropriately.

Background: The theory of Transition Shock presented here builds on Kramer's work by outlining how the contemporary new graduate engaging in a professional practice role for the first time is confronted with a broad range and scope of physical, intellectual, emotional, developmental and sociocultural changes that are expressions of, and mitigating factors within the experience of transition.

Data Sources: This paper offers cumulative knowledge gained from a programme of research spanning the last 10 years and four qualitative studies on new graduate transition.

The experience of marginalization in new nursing graduates.

This article discusses the conceptual history of marginalization, suggesting its use as a framework within which to understand some of the causal relationships between the high rate of attrition of new nursing graduates from professional nursing and the difficulties incurred during their transition from student to professionally practicing nurse. The application of marginalization in this article focuses on the vulnerability and alienation that these newly graduated nurses experience during their introduction to acute-care practice. The article further suggests that they are both inadequately prepared by their undergraduate education to enter into the full scope of their new role as professional practitioners, and ineffectually orientated to an oppressive workplace culture that they are expected to sustain.

Grounded theory: reflections on the emergence vs. forcing debate.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to compare Glaser's model of theory generation, where theory rises directly and rigorously out of the data, devoid of interpretivism, to Strauss's conceptually descriptive approach that encourages directive questioning and supports an interpretive stance.

Background: The discovery of grounded theory (GT) was born out of a merger between Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, the proverbial 'fathers' of GT. Since the co-creation of their approach to theory development through research in 1967, these scholars have taken seemingly divergent paths in further developing and evolving the pragmatic use of GT.

Critical thinking: perceptions of newly graduated female baccalaureate nurses.

Nursing education strives to develop critical thinking through emphasis on process, inquiry, and reasoning. Although North American nursing education programs have recommended integrating the critical thinking construct into the conceptual framework that supports undergraduate nursing programs, critical thinking is still ambiguously and inconsistently applied within the profession. The research described in this article explored the development of thinking in five newly graduated baccalaureate RNs by accompanying them on the conceptual, theoretical, and practical evolutionary journey of their first 6 months in nursing practice and explicating their knowledge development over time, offering insights into the role of undergraduate education in teaching, and fostering critical thinking as an approach to nursing practice.

Catching the wave: understanding the concept of critical thinking.

Catching the wave: understanding the concept of critical thinking¶As a practice-orientated profession, nursing is clearly guided by theoretical concepts. Concept clarification attempts to show speakers and readers how they can liberate themselves from the judgement limitations imposed by rigid, unexamined beliefs, by exposing differences in the interpretation of language and how that interpretation creates meaning. Critical thinking is one way nurses apply the process of inquiry.