Choosing Nursing as a Profession

The aim of the research was to determine the reasons why students enroll in undergraduate nursing studies and in what way the students’ age, type of studies and familiarity with the profession affect their selection. In total, 156 first— and second-year nursing students between the ages of 18-30 participated in the study that was carried out at the University of Applied Health Sciences in Zagreb. The students had to answer multiple choice questions about their personal reasons for choosing nursing studies and were offered four different reasons as possible answers. Most students chose idealism as the reason for choosing nursing studies (46.2%), regardless of whether they were full-time or part-time students. Students who had not attended a secondary nursing school mainly choose materialism as the reason (20.0%). Furthermore, the choice of idealism decreases with the students who had already attended a different university (34.8%), while for the first-time students the choice of the same reason increases (48.1%). For almost half of the interviewed students, humanity, ethics, and the desire to help are the reasons why they chose nursing studies, while 30.8% of the interviewed students selected materialism as the main reason. It is interesting that regardless of the type of reason the students chose, 95.5% concluded that they still want to work in the nursing profession in the future. Only a handful of students opted not to choose any of the given answers, but chose to describe their own reason themselves. It is pointed out that only one student responded to the question by saying, “Because I felt the calling.” The research was based on four reasons for choosing nursing as a profession: idealism, materialism, heritage, and choosing it as their second choice. In the fifth question they had to choose one of the following reasons: idealism, materialism, heritage, or second choice. They were given the definition of every option to make sure that they would choose the right one, based on their subjective understanding of nursing as a profession.