Career Construction and Narratives in the Nursing Profession: Nurse Managers and Registered Nurses on Alternative Work Arrangements

Abstract

Alternative work arrangements present novel ways of organizing that continuously change the nature of work and careers. This dissertation adds to the growing literature on the changing nature of careers and workplace relationships, specifically on the lived experiences of nurse managers and their supervision of permanent and travel nurses as well as the lived experiences of travel nurses in the United States. I collected data using one-on-one semi-structured interviews and I analyzed the data using thematic analysis. The first study investigated nurse managers’ perceptions of their nurses who worked in alternative work arrangements (RQ1: How do nurse managers categorize and perceive alternative work arrangements? RQ2: How do nurse managers communicate with nurses in alternative work arrangements and nurses not in alternative work arrangements?). The second study explored how travel nurses perceived their relational experiences with other nurses (RQ: How do travel nurses manage nurse-to-nurse relationships with permanent nurses?). The third study considered travel nurses’ career construction narratives and how they made sense of their career choice and path (RQ: How do travel nurses make sense of their careers?). My dissertation investigated the relational effects of alternative work arrangements in the management of nurses and the delivery of nursing tasks. I learned that nurse managers and travel nurses view patient care as a team-based enterprise but they differed in how they enact that vision. Nurse managers worked hard at building core teams of permanent nurses supplemented by travel nurses (and other forms of temporary nurses), while travel nurses viewed their contribution as part of their personal curiosity in learning how other nurses perform tasks. Travel nurses and nurse managers also perceived travel assignments quite differently in terms of professional development where nurse managers viewed travel nurses as interim help while travel nurses viewed travel assignments as learning opportunities to gain exposure and to improve their competencies. These different expectations can create tensions as nurse managers may consider travel nurses as products of the nursing socialization process while travel nurses view themselves as “work-in-progress” protagonists in their constructed career narratives who create their unique socialization experience through travel assignments.