PERBEDAAN PERSEPSI CARING MAHASISWA PROGRAM STUDI ILMU KEPERAWATAN DI FK UGM

Background: Nursing is frontline of health service because it has direct contact with patients within 24 hours. Caring behavior is affective domain used to maintain relation between patients and nurses. It is required in efforts to fulfill patients� needs. The practice of caring behavior starts from the creation of good caring perception during education. The result of preliminary study showed there was surprising behavior whereby fourth year students had lower caring perception than first year students despite the fact that the latter had not got clinical experience of caring behavior. For this reason the researcher is interested in studying caring perception of nursing students at Faculty of Medicine Gadjah Mada University during both academic and professional stages. Objective: The study aimed to identify difference in caring perception of nursing students at Faculty of Medicine Gadjah Mada University. Method: The study was non-experimental with cross sectional design. It was carried out in October-November 2012 involving nursing students at Faculty of Medicine during academic and professional stages. Research instruments were questionnaires of caring perception adopted and modified from Caring Dimension Inventory (CDI-25). Statistical analysis used one way ANOVA and Kruskal- Wallis test. Result: Students undergoing professional stage had higher score of caring perception than those undergoing academic stage. The result of deviation test on score of caring perception in each batch showed significant difference with p value 0,006. Conclusion: There was difference in caring perception of nursing students at Faculty of Medicine Gadjah Mada University between students undergoing academic stage and those undergoing professional stage