Learning community participation: a valuable opportunity for transferring actions and behaviors within the nursing learning and working context?

Abstract

Aim/objective: Indicating how community participation transfers to application within the nursing learning and working context. Background: Preparing nurses to drive advances in health care requires the integration of working and learning. Learning communities are therefore recommended to connect students, educational programs and health care organizations. Design: A multiple case study with three hospital learning communities was conducted during the 2019–2020 academic year, partly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The main data were collected by conducting three group interviews and 21 individual interviews with members. A hybrid thematic analysis approach was used. Results: Seven themes originated from the analysis: learning community features, learning community preconditions, learning community needs, impetus, application, research context and meaningfulness. Individual members applied acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes later or in other situations. Depending on the case, collective application manifested as inventing, consulting or reusing, but this seemed less sustainable in the research context at the time. Conclusions: Application within the nursing learning and working context occurs and is sustained at the individual level even when there are no organized learning community sessions in times of crisis. Framing and facilitators’ support can be used to encourage collective application.