“Fighting every step of the way”: nursing students in struggle with converging systems of power

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to make legible nursing students’ efforts and aspirations as well as the industries that shape nursing education. Utilizing constructivist grounded theory, I interviewed 33 pre-licensure nursing students and recent graduates residing in California. Findings indicate that nursing students are engaged in active struggle. Nursing students internalize, perpetuate, and resist systems of oppression by mapping nursing education priorities, navigating the power dynamics of nursing programs, laboring through colonialism internalized and collectivized within cohort dynamics, and locating themselves in relation to community and future change. Nursing programs are vital sites of contestation with opportunities to expand and transgress the bounds of nursing, academia, and health care, not merely staging grounds for licensure. This study contributes to the excavation of oppressive systems, centering individual and collective student agency within the context of increasingly exploitative systems of education, nursing, and health care.

Keywords:

• Nursing
• struggle
• power
• nursing education

Acknowledgements

This work is only possible through the guidance of critical scholars, kasamas, and students – past and present. The very process of uplifting nursing students’ agency continues to serve as a deep lesson in accountability and I have such gratitude for cultural workers, organizers, and scholars who not only interrogate our current conditions with historical context but also remind us to dream and build liberatory futures free from exploitation. Special thanks to Venika Marwaha, for your contributions to the initial phase of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Valderama-Wallace

Dr. Claire Valderama-Wallace’s (she/siya) journey has taken her from physiology (UCLA) to public health (George Washington University) to nursing (UCSF and UC Davis) in classrooms, clinical settings, public health organizations, harm reduction organizations, and organizing spaces. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nursing at California State University, East Bay, where she teaches Community Health Nursing, Community Engagement, and Health Equity and Population Health. She is the MSN Program Coordinator and co-chairs the department’s Dismantling Racism in Nursing Education Committee. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Teaching and Learning in Nursing and is the Chair of the Diversity and Social Justice Committee of the Public Health Nursing Section of the American Public Health Association. A vision for anti-imperialism and liberatory futures guide her work.