Nurses’ Images of the Nursing Profession and Their Caring Behaviors*

INTRODUCTION: It is important for good quality nursing care that nurses display nursing care at a good level. It is known that nurses’ caring behaviors are influenced by society’s image of nursing. However, it is not known how the perception of the nursing profession among nurses themselves affects their caring behaviors. This study was conducted with the aim of assessing nurses’ images of the nursing profession and their caring behaviors and determining the correlation between them.
METHODS: This descriptive and correlational study was conducted with 98 nurses working at a university hospital. A Questionnaire Form, the Caring Behaviors Inventory‐24, and the Image of the Nursing Profession Scale were used to collect data. Continuous variables were expressed with mean ± standard deviation and categorical variables with numerical values and percentages. The Mann–Whitney U test, the Kruskal–Wallis test, and Spearman’s correlation analysis were used in the evaluation of the data.
RESULTS: It was found that 65.3% of the nurses had a good image perception of the nursing profession. According to the care behaviors scale, they had the highest scores on the sub-scale of knowledge and skills (5.46 ± 0.55) and the lowest on connectedness (4.88 ± 0.75). The assurance, respectfulness, and caring behavior total scores of those who chose the profession willingly were found to be higher (P <.05). It was determined that there was a significant positive correlation between their perceptions of the image of the nursing profession and the caring behavior total and its sub-scales (P <.05).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: In the current study, the nurses had a good perception of the image of the nursing profession and that their caring behavior levels were high. In addition, as their professional image perception scores rose, their caring behaviors perception scores also rose.