Cultural Capital Accumulation Mechanisms and Their Effects on the Professional Habitus of Romanian Nurses

Limited resources and no research exist on the Romanian nursing educational programs during the last decades and on the consequences of the educational changes for the nurses profession and for the medical field.This qualitative research focuses on various forms of formal education that nurses attended in order to obtain professional competences in the last 70 years. The participants to the study were 10 senior nurses and leaders in nursing education from Iasi county and from national level with more than 20 years of clinical practice or involvement in negotiating nursing education in various phases.The study also investigated the characteristics of the social actors in relation to the mechanisms of constructing the cultural and professional habitus and acquiring cultural capital, the impact of the diversity of scolarization forms on the nurses collective identity and group cohesion, as well as the implications on the medical field from the theoretical perspectives of Pierre Bourdieu and Claude Dubar.The findings of this research may shed further light on the effects produced by the changing contemporary nursing education on the reconfiguration of the clinical practice and on the autonomy and internal coherence and cohesiveness of the nurses professional group.