The impact of clinical internship experiences on professional identity among nursing undergraduates: A qualitative study based on control-value theory.

BACKGROUND

Professional identity can enhance service quality, reduce turnover intentions and maintain professional sustainability. Clinical internships are a critical period for the formation and development of nursing students' professional identity, as well as a key period for their future career choices. However, existing research has not clarified which experiences during internships are key factors influencing nursing students' professional identity, or students' perceptions of these factors. Consequently, we explored the influencing factors and sought ways to promote change to provide recommendations for constructing an intervention model for future applications.

AIM: This study aimed to use a qualitative research approach based on control-value theory (CVT) to explore how specific experiences of nursing undergraduates during clinical internships influence the formation, maintenance or wavering of their professional identity.

DESIGN

A descriptive qualitative research design.

METHODS

Data was collected from December 2024 to January 2025 via in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was applied to the data.

RESULTS

Three themes were identified for this study: (1) Environment: prerequisites for nurturing professional identity formation, (2) Value appraisal: a key factor determining nursing students' career choice intentions, and (3) Emotion: the psychological mediator linking experiences and endpoint outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS

This study not only identified the key factors in the formation of nursing students' professional identity, but also discovered the path relationships between them, elucidating the mechanisms of their occurrence and development. We recommend that managers prioritize the implementation of improvements in these areas listed above to ensure a substantial increase in students' professional identity.