Zanjan Nursing Student's Opinions toward Nursing and Reasons for Giving it Up

There has been a considerable interest shown recently in student nurse attrition. Despite a long history of research on this problem, attrition rates remain a cause for concern. This article describes a cross-sectional study to identify the Zanjan nursing students’ opinion toward “nursing “attrition” and “the main reasons for attrition” in 2009. 130 students selected by census filled a researcher -made questionnaire. Results showed that only 30% of respondents have positive opinion toward nursing and most of them explained that they have had a decision to change their major (57%) and attrition (48.5%) during their study. The main reasons for attrition from the Zanjan nursing student's point of view in this study were: poor social setting, discrepancy between pre-entry perceptions of nursing and the real fact of it, social gap between physicians and nurses, poor salary of graduates or financial factors, staff and health care team negative attitudes and inappropriate clinical climate. There was no significant statistical difference between the opinions of students of various semesters of education. The results suggest the need to do a better job of preparing potential students for what they will encounter in nursing prior to admission and to monitor very closely how students are responding to the program through their study. Nursing needs to receive considerable media attention including interviews with practicing nurses who should describe aspects of the profession and the work of nursing that they do. The almost universal recommendation is to provide a very realistic picture of nursing in information giving sessions for interested potential students confirm this. Additionally health care managers should consider nursing more and apply policies which make nurses feel more valued in the community.