| Crucial to the plight of nursing as a profession is the prospect of enhancing members' status by increasing professionalism. This study examines the degree of professionalism among practicing Registered Nurses in South Texas, specifically their attitudes toward conformance with professional behaviors based upon Hall's Professionalism Scale. Additionally, an assessment of other factors which may impact attitudes toward professionalism is explored, focusing on preparation for practice from three nursing educational degree programs. Limited research is available which focuses on the attitudinal dimension of professionalism among nurses who are educated within three educational programs. A key question is "Does basic educational attainment drive the degree of professionalism demonstrated through practice", and if so, "how does educational attainment foster or drive professionalism?";This exploratory study analyzes (N= 244) mailed and electronic responses from randomly selected, actively practicing Registered Nurses targeted from 64 counties in South Texas. Hall's Professionalism Scale served as the data collection instrument designed to determine professional attitudes toward behaviorally worded statements (1---strongly agree to 5---strongly disagree). The six attitudinal dimensions (Hall, 1968, Schack & Hepler, 1979) were: (1) Use of the Professional Organization as a Major Referent (serves as the major resource of ideas and judgments for the work of the individual professional); (2) Belief in Continuing Competence (accept personal commitment to continually extend professional knowledge); (3) Belief in Self-Regulation (work of the profession should only be judged by members of the profession due to their inherent qualifications); (4) Sense of Calling to the Field (dedicated to the work of the profession); (5) Autonomy (should be knowledgeable and skillful in making decisions and judgments about their work); (6) Belief in Service to the Public (profession is regarded as being indispensible to society).;Inferential statistics were utilized to establish whether there were statistically significant differences between the degree of professionalism manifested in practice by nurses educated within associate, diploma, and baccalaureate nursing programs. Descriptive statistics were used to report the nature of any existing effects. Attitudinal items were examined utilizing univariate and multivariate linear regression models. Logistic regression analysis was utilized to determine more about the relationship between several independent or predictor variables (basic nursing program, age, gender, shift worked, employment status, professional organization membership, professional journal subscription, professional certification, role in the organization, years of nursing practice, practice setting, continuing education hours, salary, expressed degree of satisfaction, and mentor relationship toward the dependent variable (Hall's Professionalism Scale---6 attitudinal dimensions).;This study is grounded in the concepts of applicable social and behavioral theories which provided the framework for the data analysis. Specifically, the concepts of attitudinal change and professionalism as they relate to the understanding and prediction of behavior as well as adaptation of behavior.;Nurse respondents reported a moderate level of professionalism (p<0.05) however, baccalaureate degree nurses demonstrated higher mean professionalism scores in all six attitudinal dimensions. The results also suggest that basic nursing education, as measured by the degree of educational attainment is not a strong predictor of professionalism of nurses. Other variables were found to contribute in a synergistic fashion to the degree of professionalism of nurses who had attained a baccalaureate level of education. These other variables are also important to attitudes toward professionalism demonstrated by those nurses who had attained associate or diploma levels of education.;The nature of these other factors and whether they operate in a fashion to increase or detract from professionalism is a major focus of this dissertation. Targeting measurable professional behaviors can be used to improve the professionalism of the profession among nurses at all educational levels and ages. |
