Empowering Tomorrow’s Nurses: Building Psychological Capital in Early Prelicensure Nursing Students
by Dr. Loretta Aller, PhD, MSN, RN, Nurse Educator Consultant | May 1, 2026
Nursing education isn’t getting easier. In fact, preparing students to enter a profession marked by immense responsibility, emotional labor, and growing workforce strain, is increasingly challenging. Rising nurse attrition, burnout, and early career exits have made one thing clear: clinical competence alone is not enough. Supporting students’ psychological readiness early in their education may be just as important as teaching skills and concepts.
One promising framework for this work is psychological capital (PsyCap), a construct that includes hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. PsyCap reflects a person’s ability to persist through challenges, adapt to setbacks, and believe in their capacity to succeed. It is malleable and open to growth and development. While these traits are known to support performance and well-being in a wide variety of employment settings, far less is known about the PsyCap of first-semester, prelicensure nursing students, or how it connects to developing critical thinking.
To explore this gap, a mixed-methods study was conducted with 185 first-semester BSN students using the PsyCap Questionnaire (PCQ) and Photovoice as both a teaching strategy and research method. Photovoice invites participants to capture photographs representing their experiences and pair them with brief reflections, allowing students to “give voice” to their learning in a visual and narrative way. Students completed the PCQ and three Photovoice assignments aligned with course content: Strategies for Success, Communication, and Spirituality. While the study activities were assigned, participants could choose whether their data was used in the analysis. The study generated over 700 photos and reflections, with an 85% response to use their data; reflecting a strong sense of engagement and trust.
What the Findings Revealed
Quantitative results showed that incoming nursing students possess meaningful psychological strengths. Among PsyCap components, hope was highest, followed by resilience, with efficacy and optimism slightly lower. Students who worked while in school or served as primary caregivers scored significantly higher overall, suggesting that real-world responsibility may strengthen, rather than deplete, psychological resources.
The qualitative findings were equally illuminating. Students demonstrated early critical thinking patterns. When reflecting on strategies for success and communication, most responses reflected concrete thinking, focusing on practical steps, tools such as textbooks and planners, and immediate actions. In contrast, reflections on spirituality more often demonstrated abstract thinking, emphasizing meaning, purpose, connection, and identity. Together, these patterns suggest that first-semester students are not lacking critical thinking ability, they are developing it.
One notable outlier illustrated this well: a student’s highly detailed reflection on meal planning, budgeting, and family care revealed advanced reasoning, prioritization, and systems thinking. Though framed in everyday life terms, the reflection reflected skills directly transferable to clinical judgment and professional practice.
Implications for Nursing Education
It is well-established that critical thinking is a precursor to clinical judgment, which is central to patient safety and professional readiness. These findings suggest that nurse educators can, and should, begin cultivating both psychological capital and abstract thinking early in the curriculum. Reflective pedagogies, ethical dilemmas, collaborative problem-solving, and creative activities like Photovoice offer powerful ways to help students bridge concrete experiences with higher-level reasoning.
Most importantly, our research team believes that this work reinforces a key message: early nursing students bring strengths worth building upon. By intentionally nurturing psychological capital in entry level students, educators can empower them to persist, strengthen their ability to think critically, make safe patient care clinical judgments, and enter the profession with greater confidence and resilience.
Related Readings
- Aller L. A contemporary model for undergraduate nursing education: a grounded theory study. Nurse Educ. 2021;46(4):250-254. doi: 10.1097/NNE.0000000000000933
- Aller L, Shelestak D, Phillips L, Reed J, Allen B. Measuring nursing student development through computer-based simulation activities. Nurse Educ. 2023;48(6):298-303. doi:10.1097/NNE.0000000000001423
- Aller, L, Almarwani, A. Self-doubt in Nursing Students: An Evolutionary Concept Analysis. Advances in Nursing Science, (2024). Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 153–165. doi: 10.1097/ANS.0000000000000475
- National Council for State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN). (2024). Stemming the tide: Nursing in crisis. NCSBN shines a light on issues vital to the future of the profession. In Focus, 3, 10–24.
- Aller, L., & Doherty, C. (2025). Raising Contextual Awareness: The Landscape of Prelicensure Nursing Education. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 20(1), 13-16. Retrieved from https://rave.ohiolink.edu/ejournals/article/439068007
Positive Thoughts
“Great nurse educators don’t just teach skills—they cultivate confidence, model compassion, and inspire students to become the kind of nurses who lift others as they lead.”
Dr. Loretta Aller is a nursing education scholar whose program of research focuses on the development of pre-licensure students and early career nurses, particularly their decision-making, self-efficacy, and transition into professional practice. Drawing on a decade of teaching pre-licensure students, Dr. Aller conducted a grounded theory dissertation that led to Aller’s Development of Decision-Making and Self-Efficacy Model (ADD-SEM), a contemporary framework for undergraduate nursing education that has since guided multiple studies and pedagogical innovations. Building on the ADD-SEM, Dr. Aller and her team have examined self-doubt in nursing students, the use of computer-based simulation to measure student development, and is leading multi-site, longitudinal and nationally funded studies focused on enhancing critical thinking and early-program student success. Insights from this work have informed strategic teaching approaches and assignments designed to mitigate self-doubt and better prepare students for the complexities of modern nursing. In the context of post-pandemic workforce challenges, Dr. Aller collaborates with regional, national, and international organizations, including regulatory boards, simulation associations, and policy leaders to advance evidence-based strategies that support the preparation of compassionate, resilient, and forward-thinking nurses equipped to meet evolving healthcare demands.
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