1College of Nursing, Mother Teresa Post Graduate & Research Institute of Health Sciences, Pondicherry, 605 009, India.
2SOA University, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India.
3College of Nursing, Chengalpet Medical College and Hospital, Chengalpet, Tamilnadu, India.
The public image of nurses has been of great concern to the nursing profession. Nowadays nurses live in a complex world. Within the professional milieu, nurses are exposed to a professional culture wherein they internalize their professional self-image, and are encouraged to value and engage in professional autonomous practice. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to explore how different images of nursing held by society. Having socialized in such a professional culture through formal education and professional practice, nurses develop a professional self-concept, which can be transformed to role conception (i.e., their desires/expectations of what they should do asprofessionals) and values (i.e., their desires/expectations of what they should receive in exchange for their contribution to health care). Hence, this work also adopted a qualitative method in order to provide participant opinions and richness to the results of the quantitative study .The qualitative approach was also utilized to discuss counteractive measures to improve the public image of nurses.
