Discrepancy between the Image Held by Nursing Students of Themselves as Employed Nurses during the Pre-Employment Period and the Post-Employment Reality Faced by Novice Nurses

The difference between the expectations of work an individual forms before joining an organization and their perception of work after becoming an organization member is called reality shock and has a significant impact on the reasons why new nurses leave their jobs. To reduce reality shock, it is necessary to clarify the discrepancy between the reality and the image of oneself after employment, which is the source of expectations. However, while there is a large body of literature on reality shock among nurses, no studies have specifically investigated student nurses’ image of post-employment confidence. We conducted semi-structured interviews with eight nursing students who had received job offers and 10 professional nurses up to two years after graduation to clarify the differences between the image that nursing students hold of themselves as employed nurses during the period immediately before employment and the reality that they find after employment. As a result, four core categories (with 25 categories) related to participants’ images of themselves as employed nurses were extracted: life after employment, adaptation to work, adaptation to the workplace, and career foundation-building. Fourteen categories were extracted regarding the reality that nurses found after employment; upon comparing and classifying these categories according to the four core categories, a lack of concreteness in the nursing students’ image of themselves as employed nurses was identified. The results suggest that support measures, both in the basic nursing education program and in clinical hospital practice, to improve the concreteness of the image that nursing students hold of themselves as employed nurses and of nursing work can reduce reality shock and prevent job turnover upon their entry into the workforce.