Factors Affecting Student's Motivations for Choosing Nursing as a Career: A Cross-Sectional Study

Revolution in medical education system is one of the major policies of the Ministry of Health. Thus, it is suggested that input motives in this system be paid attention to along with other existing turnabouts. Career and major choice is also affected by our motives which are not of equal importance to everyone. The goal of this study was to determine the students’ motivation for choosing nursing as a career. This descriptive cross-sectional study was done on 139 nursing students in the first semester who were studying at state medical science universities in Mazandaran province. The participants were selected through a census among all subjects who were willing to participate in the study. To collect data, a two-part questionnaire was used. The first part dealt with demographic information and the second part included 19 questions on Likert scale which revolved around three domains including personal motive, social motive and professional motive in order to determine their purpose of choosing nursing major. The mean age of the participants was 19.32±1.05 years (18–24). 70 (50.4%) were female and the rest were male. Our findings showed that the most participants marked "a chance to get higher degrees" as the strongest motive for choosing nursing major. Also we found that the boys reported "a chance to get higher degrees" and "scientific content" as their first two priorities, whereas the girls reported "a chance to get higher degrees" and "career choice" as their first two priorities. Attention to the findings of this research could have some ideas for student's supervisors in order to identifying their student's interests and motivations in education. Also, it is suggested that school counselors should be upgraded in order to make students familiar with this profession and help accept more motivated students into universities.