Background: Nursing interns often experience lots of challenges during their clinical nursing internships, which can adversely affect career decisions and result in a squandering of nursing education resources. Patient safety attitudes, professional identity and climate of caring may affect nursing interns’ clinical experience. However, more evidence is requested to validate these relationships for nursing educators to develop effective education programs and facilitate interns’ successful transition.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, which used a convenience sampling method to recruit 387 nursing interns during December 2022 to April 2023 in university affiliated hospital in Hunan province, China. Data were collected using standardized scales. Spearman correlation and multiple regression analysis were employed to examine the relationship between transition shock, patient safety attitudes, professional identity, and climate of caring.
Results: Nursing interns experienced transition shock at moderate levels and the highest levels of transition shock in response to overwhelming practicum workloads, with the second being related to the conflict between theory and practice. Transition shock was negatively correlated with patient safety attitudes, professional identity and climate of caring among nursing interns.
Conclusions:Understanding the current level of transition shock among nursing interns can provide nursing educators and administrators with opportunities for reflection and subsequent personal and professional growth. Findings from this study identified the transition shock experienced by nursing interns at moderate levels, the dimensions of overwhelming practicum workloads and conflict between theory and practice scored high, which complimented previous quantitative research, and the correlation results showed that transition shock were negatively correlated with professional identity, patient safety attitudes, and climate of caring. Nursing manager and educators can use these results to build a more comprehensive educational programme and provide nursing interns with a caring environment in the clinical setting to facilitate their professional growth.