Professional Values and Clinical Problem Solving Ability of Nurses as Outcomes of Professional Socialization and Selected Associated Factors

Abstract

The present study explored the relationship of selected personal, educational and professional factors with professional values and clinical problem solving ability (CPSA) among practising nurses employed in hospitals of Tamil Nadu (Government and Private Hospitals and CMCH). The personal factors studied included the following: age, marital status, monthly salary, father s occupation, mother s occupation and motivation to join nursing. The educational factors included were level of educational preparation additional nursing qualification, type of educational institution, administrative pattern of the institution (integration of service and education), teaching and clinical facilities at the institution. The professional factors included were current position of the nurse and the years of her experience, type of hospital where she was employed, administrative pattern of hospital, membership in professional organisations, scholarly activities, inservice education at the hospital and career aspiration. The study was conducted on a sample of 825 practising nurses. One third (30.1%) of the sample was from government hospitals, one third (33.5%) from private hospitals (CMAI-17.3%; other private - 16.2%) and another one third (36.4%) was from CMC and Hospital. All the subjects were female. They were predominantly staff nurses (85.1%) and diploma holders (77.8%) Most of the subjects were in the youngest age group 20-30 years (73.9%). Majority of them (60%) had only less than four years of experience. A large percentage of nurses (83.8%) were trained from institutions which had integration of service and education and 80% of them were employed in hospitals with similar administrative set up. Most of them were self motivated to join nursing (60.7%). CONCLUSIONS: The above findings suggest that a combination of determinants were found to be significantly related to value scores. Value scores were found to be affected most strongly by the personal factors followed by the educational factors and then by professional factors.