Views on Self-Care by Immigrant Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Phenomenographic Study

Abstract

Self-care is widely promoted in nursing education as essential for student well-being, resilience, and professional sustainability. However, little is known about how self-care is conceptualized and experienced by immigrant undergraduate nursing students. This thesis addresses this gap through a phenomenographic study exploring the qualitatively different ways first-generation immigrant nursing students in Canada understand and practice self-care. The thesis includes two draft manuscripts. The first is a narrative review examining how self-care has been defined in undergraduate nursing education literature. Findings reveal broad, predominantly individualistic definitions of self-care, with minimal attention to immigrant student perspectives. The absence of culturally and migration-informed conceptualizations highlights a significant gap in current scholarship. The second manuscript presents findings from six in-depth interviews with first-generation immigrant undergraduate nursing students enrolled in a Canadian Bachelor of Nursing programme. Using phenomenographic analysis, categories of description were developed to represent the collective variation in how participants conceptualized and experienced self-care. The outcome space indicates that self-care among first-generation immigrant undergraduate nursing students was individually defined and influenced by dynamic and context-dependent processes shaped by pre-migration and migration experiences, culture, language, identity development, and access to time and financial resources. By foregrounding immigrant student voices, this study contributes to a more inclusive understanding of self-care that reflects the diverse realities of immigrant students and offers a framework for rethinking how self-care is taught, supported, and practiced in nursing education. Simultaneously, rather than understanding self-care as a singular definition, this study highlights the need for a more open and flexible understanding of self-care as a concept that is inherently shaped by context, identity, and lived experience.