Getting ready for the future: assessing and promoting graduate students' organizational values

Functioning as health care providers, autonomously and interdependently, require the development and acquisition of an appropriate set of personal, professional, and organizational values and ethical framework. Professional education at the graduate level is aimed at preparing nurses for leadership roles by contributing to the development of their unique bodies of professional knowledge and skills and internalizing values needed today in management roles. Values change with time, as does the organizational culture. This study examines whether value sets, of Israeli graduate nursing students, reflect internalization of the "new business values" in accordance with the new demands of the changing work environment. The sample consisted of 51 graduate students, from different classes, who participated in a seminar on aspects of nursing management during a three-year period. Results revealed that in each of the years examined, students ascribed significantly lower importance to organizational values, such as vision, competition, cooperation, risk taking, and status as compared to personal and professional values. The findings point to the need to strengthen the graduate students' organizational domain. Curricula should be designed to help nurses meet the emerging needs and the expected organizational outcomes.