professional image perceptions in first-year nursing students

Background: determining the professional image perceptions of the first-year nursing students who have recently chosen the nursing profession is of great importance in delineating the profession profile. the present study aimed to determine the image perception of first-year nursing students and its related factors. methods: this descriptive cross-sectional research was conducted in the fall semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. in total, 105 first-year nursing students were selected from the nursing department of the faculty of health sciences of bursa uludağ university in turkey. the study subjects were recruited randomly. a student identification form and the image scale for the nursing profession were used as data collection tools. mann-whitney u and kruskal-wallis tests were applied for analyzing the obtained data in spss. results: the mean±sd score of the image scale for the nursing profession was achieved as 149.06±11.19. students who had willingly selected the nursing profession gained higher scores than those of other students in professional qualifications, education, professional status, and appearance scale sub-dimensions and total scale mean scores (p<0.05). in addition, the mean scores of the female students in the sub-dimensions of education, gender, and total scale were significantly higher than those of their male counterparts (p<0.05). conclusion: the nursing students indicated a good image perception of the nursing profession. conducting a similar study is recommended for senior nursing students and staff nurses.