Nursing educators’ professional identity: Challenges and consequences when adopting the flipped approach

To discover how adopting the flipped approach impacts nursing educators’ professional identity we used an autoethnographic qualitative design, underpinned by appreciative inquiry. The flipped approach was first implemented in a second-year intensive clinical module with 154 pre-registration nursing students. Four nursing educators recorded their experiences (using journals), followed by an appreciative-inquiry-guided focus group drawing on their journal entries. Four themes associated with adopting the flipped approach were: (i) challenged existing and developed new professional identity; (ii) developing practice in the flipped approach; (iii) triumphs in students’ achievements and renewed motivations as educators; and (iv) challenges in developing new expertise, access to appropriate resources, and unaligned assessment program. Despite the direct challenge to their identity, participants welcomed the new approach. The challenges forced participants’ reflexive attention to core elements of the nursing academic educator prototype, from which participants felt more aligned with the newly adopted approach and subsequent outcomes.