A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT AND NON CONFLICT TALK IN CLINICAL NURSING CONFERENCES

The purpose of this study was to analyze student-teacher interaction in clinical nursing conferences. Four aspects of clinical conferences were studied: (1) the overall pedagogical patterns of the discourse; (2) the degree to which role conflict was reported by student nurses in clinical conferences; (3) the identity of major role conflicts; and (4) the cognitive processes used in conflict and non-conflict talk.; To study the questions nine clinical nursing conferences were audio-taped and analyzed. The conference participants included eight generic master level nursing students and one faculty member.; The system of analysis developed by Bellack and Associates (1966) was modified to meet the needs of the research questions. Bellack's system of analysis is based on the assumption that communication of meaning is the principal function of classroom language, and that a functional analysis of the language activity should indicate the meanings of the interaction.; The analysis of data indicated: (1) that discussions within the conferences were initiated by the students 62 percent of the time in non-conflict talk, and 67 percent of the time in talk related to role conflict; (2) thirty percent of the interaction during the clinical conferences contained talk about role conflict; (3) the types of nursing role conflict identified in the literatures as occurring upon entrance into the work world were experienced by the students in this study; (4) the empirical processes of fact-stating and explaining were the cognitive modes used most frequently both in conflict and in non-conflict talk; (5) there was an increase in opining and a decrease in fact-stating in conflict talk as compared to non-conflict talk.; The role conflicts experienced by student nurses in this study appeared to have a basis in ethics and a basis in law. If the findings of future research are similar, guiding the conferences from within an ethical or legal framework, may decrease opining and increase fact-stating in talk about nursing role conflict.