Nursing Students' Reluctance to Enter Aged Care: The Shop Window of Clinical Placement, a Reflexive Thematic Analysis

Aim To explore nursing students' perceptions of working with older people. Design Secondary reflexive thematic analysis of free‐text survey responses. Methods Free‐text responses from open‐ended questions in a national survey of pre‐registration nursing students were re‐analysed. Results Students consistently equated nursing older people with residential aged care. This observation shaped five themes into a central paradox: valued care, devalued practice. Clinical placement operated as a shop window into nursing futures, where what students were shown and what was kept out of sight shaped how they read a career in aged care. Reluctance to work in aged care was associated with unsafe staffing, invisible registered nurse roles, unsupported emotional labour, limited career pathways, and placement experiences that obscured skilled gerontological nursing practice. Conclusion Reluctance to enter aged care appears to be driven more by structural conditions than by students' attitudes towards older people. Efforts to strengthen recruitment should focus on staffing, the professional visibility of registered nurses, and curricula that prepare students for the emotional, moral, and cultural dimensions of aged care practice. Implications for the Profession and/or Patient Care Broader placement experience and stronger gerontological nursing content that reflect a changing demographic are needed. Improving workforce conditions is a key recruitment strategy. Impact This study reframes students' reluctance to enter aged care as a structural rather than an attitudinal issue and highlights problems with the representation of gerontological nursing. Reporting Method Reflexive Thematic Analysis Reporting Guidelines (RTARG; see ). Patient or Public Contribution No Patient or Public Contribution.