Why Do Nursing and Midwifery Students Choose Their Profession in Turkey?

Özet

This study was carried out in order to find out the opinions of nursing and midwifery students about their professions. This cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted on Health School students at Yuzuncu Yil University in 2014- 2015 spring term. 473 voluntary students were included in the study (except the cases of abs ence, suspension of registration and non-voluntary students). The data were collected by the question form prepared by the researchers, and were evaluated in SPSS software with the application of percentage and chi-squared tests. It was found that the majority of our students have chosen the profession due to the ease in finding a job. It was also found that half of our students had a desire to change their professions. On the other hand, the ones who made their career choice based on strong reasons did not have such motivations. While most of our students (92.8%) knew their profession was taking major roles in treatment and aftercare periods, a significant proportion (42.5%) did not consider their professional status positively, and almost half of them (43.6%) stated that they belie ved their profession was not wellknown enough. Students stated that the education of nursing and midwifery needed to be given at the bachelor level (84.4%) and indicated that they would like to specialize in branches of their profession. Students (87.9%) also evaluated the participation of the males in the profession positively. In the 21st century, employment plays a major role in the profession selection and according to our findings our students mainly made their choice in accordance with this argument. It was determined that our students were aware of the responsibilities of their profession, but were affected by the negative public image of their professions.