Health Colleges Students’ Perceptions of Nursing and Their views on Nursing Roles and the Future of Nursing

This descriptive study was designed to investigate the first year (freshmen )and the fourth year health college students’ views on nursing roles and the future of nursing and the fourth year students’ perceptions on nursing. this study is a descriptive. the study population consisted of the freshmen and fourth graders at department of nursing at a health college (first year:127, fourth year: 100 student) in 2008-2009 academic year. with a 70% participate rate. caring role of the nurse was the mostly anticipated role among the both groups of students (19.8% of the first grade and 19.2% of the fourth grade). 59.5% of the fourth grade students mentioned that their perceptions of nursing have changed in a positive manner while 14.9% claimed a negative change. as 57.1% of the first grade students stated that their nursing roles would change in the future, more than half of the fourth grade students (56.5%) expressed that they don’t expect any change. students focused on medical and technical nursing roles, but fourth-year students expressed much more the nursing roles related to health protection and promotion comparing to first year students.