Nursing: what do students think of the profession?
Section: TEACHING TO LEARN
Authors
1José Ramón Martínez Riera, 2Luis Cibanal Juan
Position
1Profesor del Departamento de Enfermería Comunitaria, Medicina Preventiva y Salud Pública e Historia de la Ciencia de la Universidad de Alicante.2Profesor del Departamento de Enfermería de la Universidad de Alicante.
Contact email: jr.martinez@ua.es
Abstract
The image of the nursing profession is quite varied and depending on multiple factors and visions. It important to determine the opinion that nursing students have to that respect, as this knowledge will permit the identification of their reality and will enable a comparison with that we aim to transmit.
Subjects and methods: a questionnaire consisting of four open questions was filled out anonymously by 3rd year nursing students at the University of Alicante Nursing School during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years. The sample of interviewed students was 348 students (both courses).
Study on the qualitative analysis on the answers given to the four questions made on the image the students have of the nursing profession and their expectations in terms of pedagogic resources/expected knowledge.
Results: students who classify nursing as a profession do so based on a value-related approach, linking the profession to disease and techniques. However, very few students associate it with care, and when they do, it is not clearly identified. Many students regard the professions from a vocational perspective to define and identify it. The positive assessment of nursing, performed from the perspective of values/capacities/advantages, provides a very wide vision from the different approaches presented by the students, who are not always that orthodox and linked on many occasions to topic or stereotypes still present in this profession. As regards the aspects that students think ought to change in the nursing profession, these changes emphasize particularly the image/recognition that the profession deserves in today´s society. Such changes should occur in the academic and disciplinary scopes, making reference fundamentally to course planning, syllabus, disciplinary development of the nurse and academic methodology in place.
Conclusions: students have a very distorted image of the nursing career and of nurses in general. They transmit the idea that the profession revolves around disease, cure, techniques and patients. They also think that the profession is linked or dependent on other disciplines.
It is necessary to give some thought to the causes that lead most students to transmit this image of the nursing profession.
Subjects and methods: a questionnaire consisting of four open questions was filled out anonymously by 3rd year nursing students at the University of Alicante Nursing School during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years. The sample of interviewed students was 348 students (both courses).
Study on the qualitative analysis on the answers given to the four questions made on the image the students have of the nursing profession and their expectations in terms of pedagogic resources/expected knowledge.
Results: students who classify nursing as a profession do so based on a value-related approach, linking the profession to disease and techniques. However, very few students associate it with care, and when they do, it is not clearly identified. Many students regard the professions from a vocational perspective to define and identify it. The positive assessment of nursing, performed from the perspective of values/capacities/advantages, provides a very wide vision from the different approaches presented by the students, who are not always that orthodox and linked on many occasions to topic or stereotypes still present in this profession. As regards the aspects that students think ought to change in the nursing profession, these changes emphasize particularly the image/recognition that the profession deserves in today´s society. Such changes should occur in the academic and disciplinary scopes, making reference fundamentally to course planning, syllabus, disciplinary development of the nurse and academic methodology in place.
Conclusions: students have a very distorted image of the nursing career and of nurses in general. They transmit the idea that the profession revolves around disease, cure, techniques and patients. They also think that the profession is linked or dependent on other disciplines.
It is necessary to give some thought to the causes that lead most students to transmit this image of the nursing profession.
Keywords:
nursing image; students; self-conceptteaching-learning
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