Revista de Enfermagem e Cuidados

Assessment of Attitudes towards Nursing Profession among Nurses and Non-Nursing Health Professionals Working in Mizan-Aman General Hospital, Southwest Ethiopia

Abstract

Ashenafi Belete, Tafesse Lamaro and Andualem Henok

Background: In Ethiopia, though, Swedish missionary nurses commenced nursing in 1895, professional growth including higher research contribution in the field of the profession was not appreciable and image for the profession is not clearer and is frustrating to those joining the profession and need to continue as career.

Objective: To assess the attitudes of nurses and non-nursing health professionals towards nursing profession among mizan-aman general hospital workers. Method: A cross-sectional study design was carried out among health professionals working in Mizan-Aman General Hospital on their attitudes towards nursing profession. All Mizan-Aman General Hospital health professionals fulfilling the inclusion criteria were included in the study. Structured self-administered questionnaire were used to generate data and 5% of the questionnaires were pretested at health center on health professionals. The data was entered in to Epidata 3.1 and exported in to SPSS version 17 for statistical analysis.

Result: This study revealed that 64 (50%) of the respondents shown favorable attitude towards nursing profession and 64 (50%) shown unfavorable attitude. When percentage within a category was evaluated the majority 4 (63.6%) of the physicians shown unfavorable attitude followed by the nurses 49.4% but 14 (60.9%) of the nonnursing other than physicians category shown a favorable attitude. The majority, 79 (61.8%) believed that nurses have important contribution to good patient outcome and13 (10.2%) of the respondents perceived nurses working with them as incompetent.

Conclusion: Although the majority (61.8%) of respondents believed nursing contribute to good patient outcome, only 64 (50%) of them shown favorable attitude towards nursing profession. The main impact of this considerable percentage of unfavorable attitude of respondents believed to affect quality care received by patients. Therefore continuous efforts should be made so as to bring up the morale of nurses and work upon establishing respect and valuing in inter-professional relationship among the staff.