Paper Title
Nursing Students’ Perception Regarding Nursing Program: A Descriptive Study of Four Cohorts
Abstract
Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify the nursing students’ perception of nursing as a profession and
factors influencing this perception. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to achieve the study aim. A
convenient sample of 120 nursing students enrolled in the nursing program at the college of Nursing, King Saud bin
Abdul-Aziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh participated in this study and classified equally to Pre-professional
program years and professional program years. Self-Administered Questionnaire used for data collection. It consists of two
parts: Part I include questions related to sociodemographic characteristics of the study subjects and Part II used to explore
nursing students’ perceptions of nursing as a profession with total scores ranging from 18 to 36, the greatest the score the more
positive the perception. Results: The mean age of study subjects were 20.33+ 1.3 S.D. and the majority of them were single.
The majority of students’ families allowed them to join nursing college (72.5%). Around half of the participants were
self-motivated to join nursing (40.8%). Regarding the perception of nursing as a profession there was a difference in mean
score between the Pre-professional and professional program years (29.3 + 1.87 S.D. and 30.22 + 2.1 S.D. Respectively).
The study results revealed a positive significance correlation between the level of education and perception (r = 0.212*, p =
0.02). Conclusion: The nursing students’ perceptions of nursing as a profession are positive among the majority of the study
group and higher in professional program years than Pre-professional program years.
Index Term - Nursing Profession, Perception