Honors Program
Global Citizen Scholars
Date of Award
5-2026
Thesis Professor(s)
Kendrea Todt
Thesis Professor Department
Nursing
Thesis Reader(s)
Hannah Shipp
Abstract
In an inpatient healthcare setting, patient sitters play a key role in maintaining the safety of patients who are exhibiting acute psychiatric or behavioral issues. These sitters are often nursing students working as nurse technicians. There is a gap in the literature surrounding sitting with patients, also known as specialling, concerning the lived experiences of nursing students assigned to be patient sitters as part of their job. The aim of this phenomenological study is to elucidate their experiences. The research question guiding this study is: what is the lived experience of nursing students working as patient sitters? Student nurses from East Tennessee State University were recruited via purposive and snowball sampling. Five (N = 5) nursing students participated in an unstructured interview conducted by the Primary Investigator. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, verified against the recording, and de-identified. Transcripts were analyzed using the van Manen six step method of hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry. Five themes emerged from the data: (1) Sitting is emotionally taxing; (2) Sitting with patients, in a world where they: “Throw hands”; (3) Sitting with patients while unprepared for the role: “I was never trained”; (4) Sitting with patients, feeling forgotten: Isolated and confined; and (5) Sitting with patients changes you: Scarred and yet unbroken. These findings fill a gap in the nursing literature regarding the lived experiences of nursing students sitting with patients to inform nursing policy and regulation, nursing education, nursing practice, and patient care.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Dalton, Emma L., "The Lived Experience of Nursing Students Sitting with Patients: A Phenomenological Study" (2026). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 846. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/846
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.
