Nursing students’ professional values for reinforcing the professional identity

OBJECTIVES: to understand the nursing students’ professional values in different Brazilian universities and verify a correlation between the “Professional Value” and the sociodemographic variables. METHODS: quantitative, cross-sectional, and descriptive study conducted through an electronic questionnaire with a Professional Values Scale (NPVS-3). Participants were Nursing students of all semesters from three universities - two in the Southeast region and one in the North region. RESULTS: of the 337 participating Nursing students, 282 were female. The Caring dimension presented the highest score (mean=46.61), and Professionalism, the lowest score (mean=34.65). A statistically significant association was detected between the Caring dimension, “university where is attending,” and “gender.” CONCLUSIONS: the results indicate the Caring dimension as the one containing the most scored professional values since the nurses’ training, and the relation of those values in such dimension is more significant in the female sample.