Análisis de la Identidad Profesional y la Autodiscrepancia en estudiantes de Enfermería

Resum

The professional identity of nursing, determined to a certain extent by its association to female caring values, religious vocation and dependency to the medical field, presents certain features that prevents it from developing as an independent profession with a specific professional field. Although it has been considerably developed from an academic point of view, in practice nurses are still regarded as mere helpers to the doctors. Taking this into account, it seems of paramount importance to redefine what being a nurse means, including the daily routines and practices that the profession encompasses, since there is a discrepancy between what students might perceive about the profession in the academic context of the classroom and what the actual professional exercise is. The main goal of this exploratory research is to analyze within the frame of the "Social Identity Theory" and the "Self-discrepancy Theory" the process of identification with the profession experienced by the nursing students throughout two key moments in their learning process, at the start of their studies (first grade) and at the end of their studies (fourth grade). A survey has been carried out giving 349 nursing students of the University of Seville a questionnaire during the school year 2012/2013. The results show that nursing students present a high professional identity from the very beginning of their educational process, being higher among the fourth grade students. It has also been found that differences between the genders are more significant among these fourth graders. Both, personal and traditional features have been identified to allow us to define the self- concept of "nurse". Among these we may find caring role features associated to the female gender (female identity), interpersonal skills (vocational identity) technical features (technical identity) and professional competence. It has been noticed that both groups present self-discrepancies and that there aren´t any significant differences between them. Starting with a previous distinction between both types of competences, both general care and critical care, it has been noticed that self-discrepancies in critical care are higher than in general care among the fourth grade students and higher among the male students. From all the scores in self-discrepancies the only one able to predict the punctuation in professional identity are the punctuations obtained in general care although the importance within the professional identity is not remarkable. From this exploratory research a few conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, it would be interesting to use a horizontal design including the social identity questionnaire in all its dimensions, thus being able to identify assertive and non- assertive identities. Regarding the identification of self-discrepancies regarding professional issues it would be advisable to continue the research starting with a regulated evaluation instrument that takes account of the issues identified within this project. In the future it would be important to check its effect in both the students' progress and the students' failure, aiming for the students' welfare by means of identifying both positive and negative emotions.