Chinese hospitals face high nurse attrition constantly despite the Chinese nursing education system graduating a half-million students. Many leave the profession as soon as they graduate, and those who stay in the nursing profession hold ambivalent feelings about their nursing identity. This study examines undergraduate Chinese nursing students' professional socialization experiences in American and Chinese hospitals to illuminate how the hospital experiences affect nursing students' professional identity development. In addition, I employed narrative inquiry to explore the participants' stories in this study. This study is guided by Cohen's (1981) three- sphere framework for nursing students' socialization and professional identity development (cognitive, interactional, and personality sphere) emphasizing students' experiences in the interactional sphere. This study focuses on understanding how Chinese nursing students' professional socialization experiences in hospitals shape their professional identity and self-concept. The study's participants' narratives revealed stark differences between their experiences in the American hospital and Chinese hospitals. The American hospital experiences were generally positive, while the participants' experiences in Chinese hospitals were negative. The negative experiences profoundly impact Chinese nursing students' professional identity and make them uncertain about their future in the nursing profession. The study's findings provided insights into what Chinese students learned during their experiences in the American hospital, which challenged their previous understanding of nursing and care and inspired them to provide humane, compassionate, and innovative care to patients. The participants' experiences in the Chinese hospitals revealed that the most salient professional socialization, hospital experience, was more than less ideal. In addition, the students encountered numerous challenges from burnout, unfriendly peer nurses, patients and their families, and poor leadership. Furthermore, the study illuminated one of the root problems for China's high nurse attrition rate, the Chinese College Entrance Exams, and its admission policies that recruit students to study nursing involuntarily. I concluded by offering a sociocultural lens to study Chinese nursing students' professional socialization and identity development. I further provided suggestions for practice to improve nursing students' recruitment, support nursing students' mental health, and collaboration between tertiary hospitals, nursing colleges, and researchers. In addition, I suggested applying a transformative learning lens in studying nursing education abroad programs in future research. Also, more research with qualitative methodology is needed to learn about the nuanced Chinese nursing students' professional socialization and identity development to understand better the challenges that the students face and facilitate meaningful reforms in nursing education.
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