Nursing role orientation of three groups: from the naive to the realistic

A comparison was made of the responses of nursing students, non-nursing students, and nurses to an instrument designed to measure nursing-role orientations. In addition, the nursing students were evaluated on this instrument before and after taking a professional role development course. Factor analyses indicated that, in general, this instrument did not measure the orientations as planned; however, it did reveal a "nursing awareness" continuum. The factors generated by the responses of the non-nursing students reflected naiveté regarding nursing, while the nurses were realistic. The nursing students were similar to the non-nursing students before taking the professional role development course and similar to the nurses after the course. Although there were no significant pretest-posttest differences, the nursing students' factors indicated greater knowledge of nursing professionalism after completing the course. Nursing role orientations should not be considered fixed entities, but conceptions affected by nursing experience. The failure of the instrument to measure nursing role orientations as intended supports suggestions that nursing role orientations have changed in recent years. More "modern" orientations may be appropriate at this time.