Master's Theses

Document Type

Thesis - campus only access

Date of Award

Spring 2006

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Department

Nursing

Advisor

Sandra Tweed

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the perceived intuition and willingness to act on intuition among novice nurses, who had worked one year or less as a registered nurse, and expert nurses, who had worked six years or more as a registered nurse. This investigation evaluated differences between novice and expert nurses on perceived intuition and willingness to act on intuition, relationship between perceived intuition/selected demographic variables, and relationship between willingness to act on intuition/selected demographic variables. The selected demographics were age of nurse, years of experience, number of hospitalizations, and length of time at current position and social support. Benner’s (1984) theory of “Novice to Expert” was utilized as the theoretical foundation for this investigation. The participants (N=100) were registered nurses who work at least 32 hours a week in rural hospitals in a Midwestern state. Data were collected by utilizing these three tools: Gobin Demographic Tool to obtain information about the participants, Duke-UNC Functional Social Support Questionnaire (Broadhead, Gehlbach, DeGruy, & Kaplan, 1988) to obtain self-report information about the amount of social support in the participants’ lives, Miller Intuitiveness Instrument (Miller, 1993) which measured perceived intuition and willingness to act on intuition. Findings indicated a difference between perceived intuition and the two groups of nurses, a difference between willingness to act on intuition and the two groups of nurses. A correlation existed between perceived intuition/years of nursing experience and willingness to act on intuition/years of nursing experience. However, there were no significant correlations between age, years at current position, and number of times hospitalized and perceived intuition or willingness to act on intuition. Willingness to act on intuition and social support also had no significant correlation. When looking at social support associated with the two groups, the novice group had a significant correlation with intuition and willingness to act on intuition, whereas the expert group had no significant correlation.

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Rights

Coypright 2006 Linda Gobin

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