Integrating the core professional values of nursing: a profession, not just a career

To meet the predicted deficit of more than 1 million nurses by 2020, traditional nursing recruitment must target previously un-recruited populations, as well as a culturally diversified workforce to include variations in age, ethnicity, gender, life style, national origin, and sexual orientations. As diversity increases, differences must be bridged to acculturate new nurses to recognize and identify with a shared nursing ideology and culture. The core professional nursing values (CPNVs) impart a common foundation that unites students and nurses in a meaningful, collective culture. Baccalaureate nursing programs actively promulgate these professional nursing values, however, methods to incorporate them into curricula are often absent from the literature. Following an intervention integrating the CPNVs into academic education, students affirmed the usefulness of this approach describing that the integration of the core values created a shared culture of professional nursing and deepened their commitment to the profession. Incorporating the CPNVs provided a promising approach that bridged the cultural chasm of a highly diverse student population and the profession of nursing by creating a shared professional culture across the myriad differences.