Knowledge, attitude and intention towards nursing profession among pre-clinical students

Abstract

Context: In Saudi Arabia, there is still an insufficient supply of nursing graduates to meet the growing demand for nurses to provide patient care. Aims: The aim of this study was to further investigate on the knowledge, attitude and intention towards nursing profession among pre-clinical students. Settings and Design: A descriptive-correlational design was used in this study with a total of 128 pre-clinical male and female students from a nursing school in Riyadh. Subjects and Methods: Data were obtained using an adopted survey instrument for describing the knowledge, attitude and intention among the participants. In the last two parts of the instrument, the participants answered the questions using 5-point Likert scale. Statistical Analysis Used: Data were analysed using SPSS version 20.0. Descriptive statistics was utilised to describe the variables and Chi-square to show correlation between variables. Results: In general, the participants had good knowledge of the nursing profession and a majority of the students disagreed that nursing is a job for females only. However, about 60% of the participants were not interested to study nursing. Conclusions: The findings concluded that working with the opposite sex and people not respecting the nursing profession were found to have the highest influence in preventing the students from becoming a nurse. Moreover, positive attitude towards nursing would significantly result in students becoming more interested to the profession.