Identifying Knowledge and Attitude of Secondary School Students toward Nursing Profession in Cairo Governorate

Introduction and Aim: Nursing has been called the oldest of the arts and the youngest of the profession. Expansion of the national health services is one of the expressed aims of the Egyptian Governmental policy as it consider health care as basic human rights. The current study seeks to identify knowledge and attitudes of secondary school students toward nursing profession in Cairo Governorate. Subject and Methods: A descriptive design was utilized to attain the goal of the present study. The study was conducted in randomly selected 22 experimental and non-experimental governmental secondary schools from 22 educational direc-torates in Cairo Governorate. 1293 students enrolled in 22 randomly selected schools. For the purpose of the study data was collected through questionnaire developed by the investigator consists of three parts; first part the socio-demographic data, the second and the third part were developed to identify knowledge and attitudes of the respondents toward nursing profession. Results: The present study showed that students of the study sample had inadequate knowledge regarding some aspect about nursing profession as educational preparation of the nurse, nurse s work hours, promotion opportunities, nurses gender and the nurse s role. The student have negative attitude toward nursing profession. There is relation between the students knowledge and attitude toward nursing profession. Recommendation: The study recommended that providing information about nursing, improvement of the public s image, improvement of the nurses work condition and raising the academic standards for the enrollees to the educational nursing institution.