THE COMPARISON OF THE PERCEPTIONS OF NURSING PROFESSIONS AMONG SENIOR NURSING STUDENTS RECEIVING EDUCATION IN TWO DIFFERENT EDUCATION SYSTEMS

Objective: this descriptive research was conducted to compare the perception of nursing profession among fourth year senior nursing students receiving classical or integrated education. material and methods: the scope of the research was composed of 166 fourth year senior nursing students attending in classical education system during the 2007-2008 academic year and 169 fourth year senior nursing students attending in integrated education system during the 2008- 2009 academic year; the research sample comprised 139 students in integrated system and 135 students in classical system who voluntarily accepted to participate in research. for data collection, “personal identification form” and “perception of nursing profession scale” (pnps) are used. scale has 2 sub-scales: “professional qualities” and “professional statute”. the research was conducted in accordance with ethical principles and volunteers. the percentages, standard deviation, independent sample t test, chi-square test were used in the analysis of the data. results: the students' mean age was found to be 23.10±1.05 (range: 21-27) years, 49.3% were receiving education in classical system and 50.7% receiving education in integrated system. it was found that pnps total score mean for students receiving education in classical system was 87.97±7.17, while it was 84.29±15.96 for students receiving education in integration system. there was no statistically significant difference in pnps mean points of the students educated in two different education systems (p>0.05). there was any statistically significant difference between the “professional status” and “professional qualities” sub-scale mean scores of the students receiving education in classical and integrated systems (p>0.05). conclusion: as a result, it was found that there was no significant difference between perceptions of nursing profession among the students receiving education in two different education systems and that nursing students perceived nursing profession in high level.