Male Nursing Students' Experiences During Family Health Concepts: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe male students’ perceptions of navigating learning experiences during family health concepts. The theory guiding this study is Vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural learning theory. The following results from the data collection included 10 one-on-one interviews, 10 written reflection exercises, and one focus group. Following van Manen’s (1990), an interpretive holistic circular approach to data analysis was applied to understand the essence of male students learning and navigating the social environment of family health concepts in nursing clinical rotations. The theme development included moving back and forth between pre-understanding, existing literature, and contextual data to construct new understandings of the essence of the phenomenon, following the Hermeneutic Circle of data analysis. The results included three themes developed through the data analysis including (1) obstacles male students face, (2) social interactions' impact on learning, and (3) impact on decisions for future practice.