College Students' Image of Nursing as a Career Choice

Abstract

This article reports a study of the image of nursing among college students. It has been inferred that the poor image of nursing has a negative impact on recruitment into the profession. A convenience survey of two groups of college students was instituted to determine the image of nursing in relation to an ideal career, and to discover if any factors make the choice of nursing as a career more likely. The responses of 163 nonnursing students were compared to those of 93 nursing students. These findings indicate that the image of nursing as a career choice among nonnursing college students correlated with their ideal career at r = .4072. As expected, nursing students correlated nursing with their ideal career more positively (r = .5941) than the nonnursing students. Implications for nursing and suggestions for further study are included.