The wicked problem of healthcare student attrition

The early withdrawal of students from healthcare education programmes, particularly nursing, is an international concern and, despite considerable investment, retention rates have remained stagnant. Here, a regional study of healthcare student retention is used as an example to frame the challenge o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nursing inquiry 2019-07, Vol.26 (3), p.e12294-n/a
Main Authors: Hamshire, Claire, Jack, Kirsten, Forsyth, Rachel, Langan, A. Mark, Harris, W. Edwin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attrition
Conceptual development
Educational programs
Health care
Intervention
Medical education
midwifery
nurse education
Nursing education
Policy making
Recurrent
retention
Student retention
Students
undergraduates
wicked problems
withdrawal
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The early withdrawal of students from healthcare education programmes, particularly nursing, is an international concern and, despite considerable investment, retention rates have remained stagnant. Here, a regional study of healthcare student retention is used as an example to frame the challenge of student attrition using a concept from policy development, wicked problem theory. This approach allows the consideration of student attrition as a complex problem derived from the interactions of many interrelated factors, avoiding the pitfalls of small‐scale interventions and over‐simplistic assumptions of cause and effect. A conceptual framework is proposed to provide an approach to developing actions to reduce recurrent investment in interventions that have previously proved ineffective at large scale. We discuss how improvements could be achieved through integrated stakeholder involvement and acceptance of the wicked nature of attrition as a complex and ongoing problem.
ISSN:1320-7881
1440-1800
DOI:10.1111/nin.12294