Socialization and Mentoring

Nurses today have many entries and exits from the health care workplace. Nurses change clinical specialties with ease and leave employers for childbirth or child care, to care for elderly parents, for advanced education, or for international nursing experience. Sometimes they return to the health care workplace, often years later, as re-entry or "new" nurses. It is not uncommon for one individual to have multiple careers that are widely divergent and bear little relationship to each other. Nurses also change from full-time to part-time employment and back again. They enter nursing for the first, second, or third time as young adults, in middle age, or as seniors, and they come from diverse ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds. Many are educated in one country but practice in several other countries. Given this individual variation, as well as diversity in practice patterns, how these nurses are socialized and resocialized in the health care workplace in the 21st century is of profound importance.