Transition to Practice as Professional Formation: Applying Professional Role Identity Formation Theory to New Graduate Nurse Development

This article presents a transition-to-practice program grounded in O’Rourke’s Professional Role Identity Formation Theory. Addressing a persistent gap between technical competency and professional formation, the program explicitly aligns competency, epistemology, and pedagogy within nursing’s professional and disciplinary foundations. The article offers nursing professional development practitioners a theory-guided framework for designing transition-to-practice programs that prepare new graduate nurses to perform safelty, and to think, act, and engage in professional nursing practice.