Graduate nurses in community healthcare. Choice and underlying rationale

This paper addresses the question of the construction of identity in the nursing profession, and seeks to identify the reasons behind the choice to work in a field of nursing – community healthcare – which is in little demand as a first place of work. Those who choose to work in this field, therefore, represent a departure from the norm.Theoretical input revolves around key themes such as social representations, the sociology of professions and professional identities, the objective being to identify the motive forces behind the action of our subjects. In view of the principal objectives of our research, we opted for a naturalist, descriptive approach, based on qualitative and biographical data. To collect data we used semi-structured interviews of a biographical nature, and subsequently proceeded to analyze the data we had collected.Finally, we recapitulated the key events in the professional career of our subjects, from the selection of their nursing course to their initiation in professional life, with the focus on the rationales which underlie the choices they make in selecting their first place of work – most of which choices can be classed as personal, family-related, curricular or contextual.