A comparative descriptive survey of the professional values of final year student nurses in a college and a university in KwaZulu-Natal

Abstract

Introduction: There have been a lot of complaints from the public about professional nurses’ conduct and lack of caring in South African health care facilities. Nurses don’t seem to care about patients and the public cannot trust the nurses due to the way nurses treat patients in the health care facilities. Student nurses are socialised with nursing professional values during their training either from a university or from a nursing college and are expected to have mastered these professional values by the final year of their studies before they go and practice as professional nurses.

Aim of the study: The aim of the study was to describe and compare the professional values of final year student nurses in a college and a university in KwaZulu-Natal.

Methodology: A quantitative survey design was used to describe and compare the professional values of final year student nurses doing the comprehensive four-year course. A validated Nurses Professional Value Scale (NPVS) 26 item revised questionnaire was used to collect data from 128 college and 83 university students after receiving ethical clearance. Non-probability sampling using a Random and consecutive sampling was used to select the college campuses and the students were selected using purposive sampling method. Analysis was undertaken using SPSS version 23.

Results: The descriptive statistics reported on the five factors of the NPVS, which were patient privacy, ethical practice, activism, research and leadership. The majority of the sample viewed patient privacy and ethical practice as the most important values and leadership and research was rated low. There was a statistically significant difference in professional values between the college and the university respondents, with the university respondents scoring higher than the college respondents which indicated that university respondents had more professional values than college respondents.

Recommendations: This included teaching and assessment of professional values, ethical practice in clinical placement, leadership training for student nurses and self- directed learning to update their knowledge and research.