Nursing Students' Employment Hope: Türkiye Example: Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study

ABS TRACT Objective: Today, unemployment has become an in- creasing problem. In general, the reason for attending university in our country, Türkiye, is the anxiety about getting a job. The authors’ aim was to investigate undergraduate nursing students’ employment hope levels and to determine the factors affecting employment hope. Material and Methods: In this study, the descriptive-survey research method was used. The sample of the study consisted of undergraduate nursing students who attended the nursing faculty of a public university in the 2018-2019 academic year. The Sociodemographic Characteris- tics Questionnaire, Employment Hope Scale and Beck Hopelessness Scale were used as data collection tools. Results: The sample group of the study consists of 645 students and the participation rate was 59.12%. In the study, 53.5% preferred nursing of their own free will, 82.5% wanted to improve themselves in the profession and to stay in the profession after they graduated, and 89.3% worried about finding a job. The analysis of the correlation between the variable choosing nursing by one’s own preference and the employment hope levels revealed that, though statistically not significant, the variable positively correlated with the “psychological empowerment” subscale (p=0.067), and sig- nificantly positively with the “goal-oriented pathways” subscale (p<0.001). Conclusion: It is recommended to provide the participants with guidance services on the psychological effects of unemployment and methods to cope with these effects, and to gain them various per- spectives to view nursing from different aspects by acquainting them with the fields they are to work in after graduation.