Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
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SIMILARITY DISCERNMENT IN GENERAL AND NURSING
REPRESENTATIONS
Sharie L. Falan, PhD, RN
Western Michigan University
Bronson School of Nursing
1903 West Michigan Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI, USA 49065
E-mail: sharie.falan@wmich.edu
OBJECTIVE
Ability to discern similarities is critical for nurses who develop,
implement, and evaluate patient care. It was assumed that
knowledge and experience affect this ability. This study tested the
hypotheses that subjects with an Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN)
or a Baccalaureate Degree in Nursing (BSN), and those with varying
years of medical-surgical experience (MSE) would differ in their
similarity descriptions of general and nursing images.
METHOD
A comparative descriptive design was used. Similarity was
measured as the presence, quantity, and patterns of analogy,
thematic, literal, and surface-level responses. The level of
similarities was measured through written descriptions produced
when subjects compared two general and two nursing images. A
convenience sample of eighty nurses was recruited from four
hospitals. Of the sample, 65% had less than ten years’ experience.
Fifty-nine percent had an ADN.
RESULTS
All levels of similarity were used, but analogy, the highest and most
complex form, was used least. For general images, BSN subjects
used significantly more literal level (p = .033); for nursing images,
use of surface (p = .031) and literal levels (p = .008) was higher
than the ADN cohort. For general images, subjects with less than
ten years’ experience used significantly more surface level (p =
.046); thematic descriptions were higher (p = .004) for nursing
descriptions. For ADN and BSN groups, there was a significant
correlation (contingency coefficient = .588, p = .000 for ADN and
contingency coefficient = .631, p = .004 for BSN) between literal
and surface similarity levels used in describing general and nursing
images. There was a strong significant correlation (contingency
coefficient = .627, p = .017) between the presence of analogy and
thematic similarity responses for both image sets by the BSN
cohort. Subjects with ≥ 10 yrs’ MSE showed a strong significant
correlation (contingency coefficient = .616, p = .039) when
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