The Relationship between Self-Confidence of Nursing Students and their Attitude towards a Nursing Career

Nursing is one of the noblest careers in the world. Nurses have a positive attitude towards the nursing profession all around the world. High self-confidence induces a feeling of power, a positive attitude towards one’s job, and a better future prospect in nursing students. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between self-confidence of nursing students and their attitude to the nursing career.
This work was a descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study conducted during the academic year of 2016 and 2017. In this regard, 180 subjects were chosen among the students from the nursing and midwifery faculties of Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran and Iran University of Medical Sciences. The required data were collected based on a self-report approach and using a demographic questionnaire, Rosenberg self-esteem scale, and questionnaire of Banaderakhshan et al. about the attitude to the profession. A satisfactory 0.77 internal validity and an 88.0 to 82.0 reliability through test-retest correlation were estimated for the Rosenberg self-esteem scale. Moreover, Alizadeh et al. (2006) reported the internal consistency coefficient or Cronbach’s alpha as 88.0 to 77.0. Content validity and reliability of the questionnaire of Banaderakhshan et al. about the attitude towards one’s profession were approved by the test-retest method and analysis in a study conducted by Banaderakhshan et al. (2006). Data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS version 16 software. The mean and standard deviation statistics, independent t-test, and Pearson correlation test were used to analyze the data.
The findings of this study showed that attitude towards the nursing career is more positive among female students and students with a higher education grade (P-value = 0.001). In addition, the results of Pearson correlation test showed a positive and significant relationship between self-confidence of nursing students and their attitude towards the nursing profession (P According to the results of this study, it is suggested that implementing measures, such as social skills training, are required to identify the potential talents of students and provide the conditions to activate these talents, to use student’s thoughts and opinions in decision-making, and to meet their spiritual needs for enhancing their self-confidence and providing appropriate educational opportunities.