Expectations and voluntary attrition in nursing students

This paper presents a series of findings generated during a larger study which aimed to develop a theoretical understanding of the reasons why nursing students voluntarily leave pre-registration nursing programmes. In this study, significant incongruence was found to exist between student expectations of pre-registration nursing programmes and the reality of these programmes following entry. The resulting dissonance was identified as an important factor in student decisions to voluntarily withdraw.A single case study design was selected to explore the causes of voluntary attrition in nursing students within a School of Nursing and Midwifery. The study population was obtained through purposeful sampling and consisted of 15 students who had previously voluntarily withdrawn from pre-registration nursing programmes. A semi-structured interview method was used to collect data from study participants. The interview schedule developed for use in the study reflected the key components of the conceptual model of higher education (HE) student attrition (Tinto, 1975, Tinto, 1987 and Tinto, 1993). All interviews were tape recorded to facilitate later transcription. The Cyclical or Interactive Model of Qualitative Research (Miles and Huberman, 1994) was used to analyse data collected from study participants.This paper describes the unrealistic range of expectations which nursing students have of nursing, the information sources and experiences which inform student expectations and how ambiguous expectations contributed to voluntarily attrition.