Socioprofessional perceptions of paramedical students about their future careers: A cross-sectional study

The phenomenon of specialization among nursing categories often challenges the formation of a cohesive professional identity and may generate difficulties in professional adaptation. Essential to this identity's development is establishing universally shared representations among paramedic students. This study explores socioprofessional representations of paramedical students, comparing them across two student categories.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among undergraduate students in two programs: the first "nursing care" and the second "healthcare-techniques" in the Marrakech-Safi region of Morocco. Employing a consensus sampling approach with 725 students, 695 individuals provided their responses. Regarding the theoretical framework, this study uses the structural approach of social representations. Data were collected through free and hierarchical associations, analyzed through prototypical analyses, similarity analyses, and a Chi-squared test, using IRaMuTeQ (version 0.7) and SPSS (version 22) software.

The findings emphasize heterogeneous representations, with some common elements and others unique to each group. First, nursing students perceivedthe nursing profession as not only laborious and stressful (P = .005) but also autonomous (P = .001), demandingprofessional values and interpersonal qualities such as empathy, humanity, and availability. On the contrary, healthcare technician studentsprimarily centered their perception of the profession on clinical practice concepts such as technique and examination. They also perceivedthe hospital (P = .004) as a favorable setting for their practice.

It is therefore incumbent upon various stakeholders in the nursing education to recognize and address the different perspectives and beliefs that students bring to the training and implement strategies to minimize potential representational divergences.