Professors who are also nurses: identity construction of nurse educators

Abstract

The objective of this study was to understand the conception and identification of teaching activities and training as part of the identity construction process of nurse educators. This is a descriptive, analytical and qualitative study. The participants were eighteen nurse professors from two universities (one public and another private) in the southern region of Brazil. Data were collected between July and September 2015, through semi-structured interviews. The data were processed using open and axial coding as proposed by Strauss and Corbin, with the aid of Atlas.ti® 7 software. The following categories emerged: Being a nurse or being an educator, Professional choices and Training for teaching: between educational training and the daily experiment. Nurse educators mainly identify with the profession of origin, because of an absence of teacher training, and have different assumptions concerning university education, which defines their identity formation.