College students\u27 image of nursing as a career choice

This thesis is a study of the image of nursing among college students. It has been inferred that the poor image of nursing negatively impacts 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 there are factors which make the choice of nursing as a career more likely. The responses of a group of 163 nonnursing students were compared to the responses of a group of 93 nursing students; This survey indicated that the image of nursing as a career choice among nonnursing college students correlated with an ideal career at r =.4072. Nursing students correlated nursing with an ideal career more positively (r =.5941) than nonnursing students; Nonnursing students identified their ideal career as consisting of four factors--knowledge, power, stability, and technical. They identified nurse career as consisting of five factors--activity, value, power, knowledge, and stability. Nursing students identified the ideal career as consisting of four factors--value, stability, leader, and technical. They identified nursing as consisting of five factors--value, knowledge, activity, technical and safety