Difficulties Faced by University Graduates as New Nurses in the Workplace

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to identify the difficulties faced by new nurses in the workplace. Six graduates of Chiba Prefectural University of Health Science were interviewed about the difficulties they reported facing in a questionnaire survey they were asked to complete.
The questionnaire consisted of 104 items. Of those, 13 items were reported as difficult by most of the subjects, which included: supporting family members; preventing bedsores; and managing the ventilator. The interview content was subjected to qualitative inductive analysis and 12 major categories of difficulties were extracted, including items such as difficulty in assessing patients’ conditions when the nurses only had a limited amount of information, difficulty in dealing with clinical situations in which they have little experience, difficulty in practicing care techniques appropriate for patients’ conditions, difficulty in dealing with multiple tasks, and difficulty in relationships with other healthcare professionals.
The findings of the present study show that new nurses who graduated from the Chiba Prefectural University of Health Science felt difficulty in assessing patients’ conditions when they had access to only very limited information, practicing nursing techniques appropriate for patients’ conditions in clinical situations in which they had little experience, efficiently and appropriately handling multiple tasks in a limited amount of time, and building relationships in the workplace.