Nurse Practitioners: Issues in Professional Socialization

This paper examines the relationship of socialization to role content, change in role attitudes and behaviors over time, and working relationships for graduates of a nurse-practitioner training program. The formal socialization in training and that occurring in the work setting in enactment of the role as a graduate professional resulted in the practice of certain skills on which both agents of socialization were in agreement. But in regard to other skills, attitudes, and expectations, the socialization received in training conflicted with socialization in the work setting. In some of these areas, the nurse practitioner could negotiate to practice in conformance with earlier socialization. But practitioners were not able to change the work setting sufficiently to replicate the socialization model of their training. Professional socialization is therefore seen as a two-step process in which the skills and values acquired in training must be adjusted to the demands of the work setting, the relative power of the professional to choose alternatives being the intervening variable.