The Formation Process of Professional Identity in Nurses

Professional identity is a reflection of personal and social identity. The professional identity is formed when the values and beliefs of a profession are internalized and socialized by its members. The aim of this study is to answer the following questions: what is the Nursing Professional Identity and how it is formed in nurses?

In this systematic review, the keywords such as Professional Identity, Nursing identity, Professional identity formation, were investigated through the scientific informational databases such as CINAHL, Science Direct, Ovid, Scopus, SID, Magiran, Pubmed, and Google Scholar from 2000 to 2017. Finally, 25 articles including keywords , which were both in Persian and English, were selected, reviewed and analyzed.

By developing nursing science and knowledge and increasing nurses professional autonomy, their professional identity has neen promoted and their work commitment to the organization and community has been increased.Moreover, the community's view and attitude related to nursing profession has greatly changed and it has been more respected compared to the past.Plus, the nursing profession has been more supported by the health system administrators.

Nurses' professional identity over the time, has been developing. In order to achieve a progressive professional identity, nursing education and research are required to be developed in academic levels .