Jennifer Lamswood

Researchers and nurse educators at Western Regional School of Nursing are studying how working while attending school could make an impact on nursing students' studies and professional work.

The study is titled "What is the impact of paid employment on nursing students' personal lives and professional development?"

Through their daily interactions with undergraduate nursing students, researchers and nurse educators Jennifer Lamswood, Pam Moores, Peggy Hancock, Gina Billard and Daphne Kennedy observed that many students take on paid employment while at the same time juggling the demands associated with completing the Bachelor of Nursing (Collaborative) Program.

"These observations sparked our interest, and led us to our study’s purpose, to understand nursing students' experiences of paid employment and the perceived corresponding effects," said nurse educator Jennifer Lamswood.

The researchers hypothesized that engaging in paid employment while completing an undergraduate nursing program has the potential to affect students in a couple of ways:

"There has been little research conducted on the subject area in Canada, and few studies have examined the experiences of nursing students," said Ms. Lamswood.

A literature review found that in other countries the number of undergraduate students who participated in paid employment while attending university is increasing (Salamonson, Everett, Koch, Andrew, & Davidson, 2012; Hall 2010). With regards to nursing students in particular, Rochford, Connolly and Drennan (2009) reported that approximately 95% of their sample had worked since commencing their nursing program. A study by Reyes, Hartin, Loftin, Davenport, and Carter (2012) found that 50% of nursing students worked more than 16 hours each week. Interestingly, paid work was found to have an inverse relationship with nursing student academic performance; the more hours students work per week, the more this negatively impacts their GPA (Reyes et al., 2012; Salamonson et al., 2012). Further impacts relate to absenteeism; 15.6% of undergraduate nursing students reported missing classes and clinical due to difficulty in balancing their workloads (Abou-Elwafa et al., 2017).

However, taking on paid work also correlated with satisfaction in students' personal and social lives – a study by Manthei and Gilmore (2005) demonstrated a substantial number of students reported that paid work contributed to their personal and social lives in a positive way. Specifically, students found that engaging in paid work while studying increased personal and social skills such as self-confidence and communication, especially when engaged in work related to their area of study (Rochford et al., 2009).

The research team has distributed surveys and collected data and are now in the process of analysing data and compiling results.