Making a difference: selection in nursing

Selection in healthcare in the UK has in the past been dominated by approaches related to ideas from the field of work psychology. Work psychology positions selection as a method which, if designed appropriately and followed exactly, can predict particular outcomes, such as “the right applicant” (or the wrong one). Methods are discussed (and researched) as having properties such as reliability, validity and fairness, and such properties as independent of the actors who design and “apply” the method. This thesis attempts to understand selection differently. Drawing on ideas from Actor- Network-Theory (ANT), an ethnographic study was conducted of selection events in nursing degree courses. At three universities selection events were observed and interviews were conducted with academic staff, administrators and service users and carers who were involved with interviewing prospective students. Data generated was analysed using immersive approaches, continuous and reflective writing and concurrent reading of literature that became relevant through engagement with the data. Undertaking an ethnographic study, thinking with concepts from ANT, allowed for selection to be understood differently from the tenor of current research. In this version selection becomes a social practice with entities such as methods, applicants or selectors effects of a series of negotiations during which more or less stable connections are formed. Difference or same-ness, treated in the literature and by selectors as preceding selection encounters, become visible as the effects of translation. As practices vary across different locations and people, effects of interactions (be that methods or ideas of “right or wrong applicants”) become highly localised and contingent. Here this study makes an original contribution to the empirical field of selection practice as well as to the theoretical field which seeks to understand and classify selection as mere observation