Abstract

Nursing is one of the most dedicated professions in the health care fraternity offering humanitarian service to people during their most vulnerable moments. Nurses play a crucial role in promoting health, preventing illness, and providing holistic care to individuals, family and communities. With their expertise and dedication, nurses make a significant impact on the well-being and quality of life of those they serve. This study aims to explore the perception about nursing profession among 12th standard students of selected schools in Bhopal and to find out the association of socio demographic variables with the perception of nursing profession. A non- experimental descriptive study was conducted on 235 students of 12th standard in selected schools of Bhopal. The study was approved by the Institutional Human Ethical Committee. A structured questionnaire was administered for collecting socio-demographic data and perception about nursing profession. The majority of the participants were in the age group 17-19 years (83.4%), residing in urban area (78.7%). The proportion of both genders were nearly equal. The findings revealed that 66.4% of students have fair perception and 33.6% have good perception about nursing profession. This study also indicated that there is a correlation between perception of students with occupation of both parents. According to the findings obtained from our research, it was concluded that majority of the students had a fair perception towards nursing as a profession. Furthermore, it was also concluded that occupation of parents acted as an influential factor affecting their perception.

1. Introduction

Nursing is a heath care profession focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities. The matter of shortage of qualified nursing personals has always been of concern, acknowledged worldwide. The profession is said to have long suffered from public stereotyping and from being closely associated with femininity and feebleness. It is reported that around 90% of Indian community have only minimum knowledge regarding various aspects of nursing profession. They only consider nurses as assistants to physician and think that their job is limited to just cleaning, giving bath to patient and helping a patient in grooming etc. Vague perception about nursing has made nursing a low-profile profession and hinders its advancement. Perception of high school students about nursing is important as they offer strategic clues towards successful recruitment of the next generation of nurses. Perception, attitude and belief are highly subjective and usually not based on facts. Perception held by the school students about the nursing profession greatly influence choosing nursing profession as a career. Thus, understanding their perception could help in a well-planned strategy to improvise the perception of high school students towards nursing and its career perspectives. ¹

Lai HL et al conducted a study in Taiwan and found that 65.4% of the nursing students would not choose nursing as a career after graduation. In India, the picture of nursing profession is changing day by day while nursing profession still suffers a mild degree of so-called stigma in certain states of the country all of which make the profession a low profile in the study. ² A global shortage of 5.9 million nurses has been reported ³. About 9 million new nurses will be required to improve health workforce globally, by the year 2030 (WHO, 2016). This noticeable shortage of nurses has been attributed to lots of factors, including low enrolment rates into the profession (American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), 2014). ⁴

The environment of healthcare has changed and so has nursing, resulting in students asking, what is nursing? In order to attract and retain bright, capable students in nursing, there must be changes in pre nursing curriculum to provide and assure accurate and definitive perception of nursing. Factors which currently contribute to students’ perceptions of nursing must be identified in choosing a nursing career, find job satisfaction following graduation and remain in nursing as a career. Nursing is one of the oldest and noblest profession. The responsibilities and duties of the nurses are diverse and the work of a nurse depends on the qualification, skills and situations. Nursing is a profession that combines physical science, social science, nursing theory and technology, in the care of others. Since years now, it is being accepted that nursing profession has numerous career advantages. This includes a large demand for nurses worldwide, various job opportunities, various career choices, salary benefit and other perks, multiple speciality area for advancement. ⁵

2. Materials and Methods

A quantitative descriptive study was conducted. The research was conducted in selected schools of Bhopal. A prior formal permission was sought from concerned authority of the schools. Students studying in 12th standard were the population of undertaken study.

Non-probability convenient sampling technique was used in this research.

The sample size was calculated using formula

N = Z2 × p(1-p)/ r2

(where z= Z statistics for a confidence level, p= prevalence rate and r =margin of error)

N = (1.96)2 × 0.188(0.812)/ (0.05)2 = 235

(*p= prevalence rate is taken from previous study ⁶, z=1.96 at 95% level of confidence and r = 0.05). Therefore, sample size taken was 235.

Students who are willing to participate in the study, can read and write English/Hindi were included in the study. Students who were absent on the day of data collection or those who refused to participate in the study were excluded.

“Socio-demographic data” sheet and “Structured Perception Questionnaire” was used to collect data from 12th standard students.

Socio-demographic data sheet-It consists of personal information of 12th standard students i.e. age, gender, education of mother and father, occupation of mother & father, annual family income.

Structured Perception questionnaire -It has 20 items, 5 point Likert-scale ranging from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1). Scoring was done as 76-100: Good, 51-75: Fair, 26-50: Poor and 1-25: Very Poor.

Both the tools were validated by experts in the field of nursing, psychology, and teaching (CVI=0.953 and 0.946 respectively). The tool was translated to Hindi language for the interest of population under study. The reliability of the tool was computed by Cronbach alpha and it came 0.91 for the study.

Pilot study was also conducted to ascertain feasibility of study prior to main study,

Ethical permission was sought from Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC), AIIMS Bhopal before conducting the research (Ref number: IHEC-SR/Intramural/2022/BSc-N/05). The confidentiality and privacy of the subjects was also assured during and after data collection A verbal informed consent was also collected before data collection. Subjects were given full freedom to withdraw from study at any point of time. However, the reason for non-participation was ascertained.

Data from the participants was collected in the month of February, 2022. The participants were provided with participant information sheet and informed consent was taken prior to data collection.

Analysis of data was done using SPSS version 20 software. Frequency and percentage distribution was done for sociodemographic data of the participants. Overall frequency, percentage distribution and item analysis were also done to explain the perception of nursing profession among participants. Chi-Square Test was used to find the association between perception and socio demographic variables.

3. Results

The study data showed that 83.4% of the participants were included in the age group of 17-19. The proportion of both genders participated in the study were almost equal (53.2% were female and 46.8 % were males). Majority of participants (78.7 %) were from urban areas.

80% of mothers and 72.3% of fathers had educational qualification up to secondary education. The analysis on professional qualification of parents revealed that 33.6% of fathers and 16.2% of mothers were working in private sector, 9.8% of fathers and 3.4% of mothers were in government sector, 30.2 % of fathers and 10.2% of mothers were self-employed, 4.7% of fathers and 35.3% of mothers were unemployed and 21% of fathers and 34.9% of mothers were in others. It was also found that 81.7% of participants have family income below 2 Lakhs as depicted in Table 1.

The present study revealed that based on scoring 33.6% of students have good and 66.4% students have fair perception towards nursing profession. All of the participants in this study have a good/fair perception towards nursing as a profession as shown in Table 2.

There is a significant association between occupation of father and occupation of mother with the student’s perception level (p<0.05).

There is no significant association between students’ perception and other sociodemographic variables (age, gender, religion, place of residence, education of father, education of mother, annual family income) as the p value is more than 0.05 (p > 0.05) as mentioned in Table 3.

4. Discussion

The present study revealed that all of the participants in this study have a good/fair perception towards nursing as a profession. Majority of the students agree to the statement that Nursing is a respected profession in the society (86.8%). The students also agrees that high level of knowledge, skills and sound character are required for nursing (70.2%) and that nursing career offers job guarantee (59.6%). These findings are in consistency with previous researches.

There is a changing perception towards men being considered suitable for nursing profession as a vast majority of students agreed to it (74.1%). This contradicts some of the previous studies with findings that nursing is perceived as a profession predominantly for women ⁷. Only a minor share of participants perceived nurses to have the power to make decisions independently without consulting the doctor regarding patient care (37%).

The analysis revealed that there is significant association between occupation of father and occupation of mother with the student’s perception level.

The study is limited to selected schools of Bhopal and the participants were selected through non probability convenient technique limiting generalization of study.

Based on the findings, it is recommended that a comprehensive analysis can be done in order to identify this diverse perception and various factors contributing to it.

5. Conclusion

The present study was to assess perception about nursing profession among 12th standard students of selected schools in Bhopal. According to the findings obtained from our research, it was concluded that majority of the students (66.4%) had a fair perception towards nursing as a profession. Furthermore, it was also concluded that occupation of parents acted as an influential factor affecting their perception.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is funded under Intramural Grant Scheme of AIIMS Bhopal (RC/AIIMS-BPL/IM-LOI/UG(N)/2023/340), which is greatly appreciated. We thank the participants and schools for their valuable voluntary contribution. We also express gratitude to administration of College of Nursing, AIIMS Bhopal.

Statement of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

References