Abstract
D.Cur. (Community Nursing Science)
Aggression becomes such a part of people’s daily lives that it is viewed as normal. As in the society nursing students at a higher education institution (HEI) also experience aggression in their lives. This exposure to aggression is of concern as it can be a possible obstacle in the personal and professional development and interpersonal relationships of the nursing students. The essence of this concern is that nurse educators need to gain knowledge of, insight into and awareness of the aggression experienced by nursing students to empower these students to manage aggression in their lives.
The purpose of this study was to develop and describe a model as a frame of reference to facilitate the health of nursing students at an HEI in Johannesburg, South Africa, who experience aggression in their lives.
The objectives of this study were as follows:
To explore and describe the experience of nursing students at an HEI in Johannesburg of aggression in their lives.
To generate a model from the results that will facilitate the promotion of health of the nursing students at an HEI in Johannesburg who have experienced aggression.
To formulate strategies for the implementation of the model.The research design was theory-generative, qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual in nature. Nursing students were purposefully sampled as they added to the richness of the data collected for the purpose of this research.
Data was collected firstly through respondents drawing a picture and writing a self-reporting story, and secondly, through phenomenological interviews. Data analysis in this research was done by means of Tesch’s method of identifying themes and categories as described by Creswell. Ethical considerations were adhere to throughout the research and consent was obtained from the nursing students participating in the research. Lincoln and Guba’s method of trustworthiness was used.
Two themes with categories were identified that reflected the nursing students’ experience of aggression in their lives. The first theme is that the nursing students experienced aggression as an integral part of their life and viewed it as a normal part of their life. The second theme is that nursing students experienced aggression as detrimental to themselves as a whole person and their interpersonal relationships.
A model as a frame of reference to facilitate the health of the nursing students who have experienced aggression to self-manage aggression constructively,was developed. The findings of this research are relevant to the world of nursing practice, nursing education and research.