Students’ Voices: Self-Talk and Motivation to Complete Nursing School

Abstract

Despite known challenges in nursing education and existing supports for students, the dropout rate remains high, exacerbating a continuing shortage of nurses that imperils safety and quality of healthcare systems. Scant data exists on how nursing students remain motivated to complete their education or what they tell themselves to overcome the challenges they encounter. For this study, 26 graduates from three cohorts at a small public university described the self-talk they used to stay motivated and graduate from nursing school. Using a grounded theory approach to identify themes from written narrative responses, the findings show that nursing students use self-talk to persist beyond adversities. Additionally, their self-talk themes are consistent with concepts of an existing student persistence model and a theory on self-determination. These findings represent students’ own voices to address a gap in the literature, and they may guide nurse educators to design more effective strategies to support persistence.