The Process of Profession's image among Nursing Students: A Grounded Theory Study.

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: Nursing has considerable progresses towards becoming professional in recent decades in comparison with previous decades and is produced a scientific base by academic preparing programs for it. Now, it is the time that the nurses should be aware of the images that they draw as professionals for themselves and others. Since these image are forming during study and probing the way of forming perceptions (image of profession) and the effective factors on it, has not been considered by students till now, and since core concepts and the procedural model of data is not made between concepts, so this study has been done for detecting the profession's image in nursing students of bachelors' degree. Research Method: This qualitative study was done in grounded theory method. The participants of this study were 30 nursing students of bachelors' degree who were in first, fourth and eight semester. Sampling method was firstly purposive. When the data were collective and analyzed simultaneously, the more sampling (theoretical) was done according to emerged categories and developing theory. After explaining the aim of research and taking written consent for participation and keeping the record of interviews, unstructured interview was used for gathering data. Simultaneously analysis method was done according to Strauss and Corbin's 1998 three staged coding. Findings: In the current study the psychosocial issue was recognized: Binary or divalent imaging of the profession, and the core variable, explaining data was determined "seeking for recognizing duality factor and try to uniting or according perceived binary images". Conceptual domains of bachelor's degree students about their profession include: the professions' social status –the nature of nursing knowledge or job –actually nursing (nursing administering). And the stages of divalent imaging include: 1) Ambiguity, 2) Event leads to contrary knowledge and instability, 3) Event lead to valuable knowledge and confidence, 4) Accepting and verifying accordant aspect and justifying the contrary aspect (verifying that the image are not accordant) and the presentation of amending solutions (for more accordance of contrary aspect). Conclusion: The results of this study show that the students of bachelors' degree obtain binary conceptions about nursing in current circumstances. So it should be done necessary actions for reducing disturbances, in order to attaining united imaging, according to the reality of related discipline. Keywords: Image, Profession, Nursing student, grounded theory.