Developing a professional identity is an essential transition for nursing students as they move through their undergraduate degree. Professional identity is described as a person's perception of themselves within a profession or the collective identity of the profession. The formation of a professional identity is an evolving process, shaped by the media, educational experiences and role modelling. The aim of this study was to develop a greater understanding of the perceptions that students, about to embark on their undergraduate nursing degree, had of the nursing profession. A drawing and mind mapping exercise was conducted with a convenience sample of commencing nursing students to explore how they viewed their future profession. The data underwent thematic analysis and then grouped into sub-themes and themes. Four key themes were identified, 'To be a nurse, I have to look the part', 'To be a nurse, I have to perform in a variety of roles', 'To be a nurse, I have to connect with others', and 'To be a nurse, I have to care for myself.' The formation of a strong pre-professional identity is important for nursing students due to the link between future job satisfaction and the development of a robust nursing workforce.

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Academic work environments are becoming progressively more digitalised and focused on performativity and commodification, increasing the potential to force an unwanted merge of the boundary between work and non-work domains. This study aimed to explore academic wellbeing and the role played by factors related to work-life merge. Data were collected from a cross sectional survey of 605 Australian and 313 UK academics, who were found to have a short version Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Score of 21.47 ± 4.11 and 21.35 ± 4 respectively, which is significantly below population norms. Australian men's scores were significantly lower than Australian women (20.7 ± .31, p = .007). Job strain was evidenced by excessive work hours, high levels of intrusive work-related thoughts, reduced physical activity and a self-perception that work-life merge adversely affected psychological and physical health, and mostly only occurred to meet work demands. Action by government education and university leaders is urgently required to identify policy and management practices that are contributing to this ongoing health concern. The establishment of national and university based advisory groups and consideration of a data warehouse to curate a public dataset on the wellbeing of staff within universities could assist in ensuring the outcomes of any action are continually assessed.

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Curriculum re-design in entry to practice nursing degrees requires a rigorous and multifaceted approach to align the needs of students, professional and industry stakeholders, community needs, the faculty's vision and university and regulator requirements. This paper relates the initial steps in the process taken to achieve this re-design in one Australian university's Bachelor of Nursing program, and describes our experiences in two parts. The first part outlines the context in which the need for curriculum renewal was triggered and the ensuing processes undertaken in the development of our new course aim, course outcomes and graduate attributes. The second part discusses how undertaking these activities then came to influence the adoption of Complexity Thinking in the design of our conceptual model, which then guided our program structure and overarching learning and teaching approaches. We share these experiences to illustrate the steps we undertook on this journey, to outline and example the program we created, and to continue the scholarly discussions around the design of baccalaureate nursing program structures, especially those that implement pedagogies inspired by the concepts related to Complexity Theory. The choice of complexity thinking as a guiding theory was key in providing the lens through which we were inspired to graduate nurses with the skills to provide care in complex situations and value the learning that comes through uncertainty, reflection, adaptation and emergence.