Role Transition Through Layered Generative Learning: The Lived Experience of Advanced Sonographers
Open AccessThe purpose of this transcendental phenomenology research was to gain insight into the essence of the journeys of six purposively selected participants as they transitioned in their profession, from working as sonographers to becoming advanced sonographers. Through in-depth interviews, this study found that these nonphysician clinicians sensed a need to push the bounds of their working knowledge of clinical reasoning and embarked on a trajectory of generative learning. Through such learning, they gained niche expertise in their profession and transitioned to a role of advanced practice. The essence of their role transition, as shown in a proposed learning model, was that they engaged in layered generative learning. Researchers and educators in occupations in which nonphysician clinicians contribute integrally to the physicians' expert work may explore the findings of this study. Researchers may investigate whether these learning journeys provide insight to other professions. Educators may design and test continuing education modules that provide just-in-time-learning for clinicians to prepare for professional advancement yet remain immersed in the context of their daily work. Scholars may use this study's finding of the characteristic of niche expertise to assess the degree of professionalization of the occupation of sonographers who transition to a role of advanced practice and increase in their degree of professional autonomy. Scholars and researchers may investigate an implication of this study's finding that in sonography diagnosis is a real time act inseparable from scanning. Researchers may study various facets of the concept of shared responsibility/accountability for the diagnosis, in diagnostic medical sonography. The reflections of the researcher during the phenomenological data analysis led to the conclusion that the structures of noema and noesis retained a closer fit to the data when the researcher changed the sequence of analysis as presented in the literature. The researcher changed the last two steps of the data analysis by reversing the sequence of structural and structural-textural descriptions. Researchers using transcendental phenomenology methodology may use this sequence to test whether it helps retain a closer fit to the data.
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