Concept analysis of professional commitment in Iranian nurses

AIM: Professional commitment has been widely discussed during the last decade. There is no comprehensive definition about “professional commitment in Iranian nurses.” Hence, this study was conducted with the aim of analyzing the concept of professional commitment in Iranian nurses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Hybrid model was used in three phases. Firstly, in the theoretical phase, data were retrieved from the CINHAl, MEDLINE, PubMed, OVID, Google scholar, and SID databases. The literature search used the keywords “professional commitment” and “nursing.” The final sample included 27 papers published in English between 2001 and 2011.Secondly, in the fieldwork phase, deep interviews with five clinical nurses were carried out, and thirdly, in the final analytical phase, the obtained data from theoretical and fieldwork phases were combined and a comprehensive analysis was conducted. RESULTS: Loyalty and tendency to remain in the profession and responsibility to the professional issues were extracted in theoretical phase. Commitment to promote caring abilities, satisfying of being a nurse, and belonging to the nursing profession were obtained in fieldwork phase. Finally, two main themes including “commitment to offering the best nursing care” and “commitment to promotion of the nursing profession” were extracted. CONCLUSION: Nursing is a humanistic profession; it has some particular characteristics due to the profession’s nature. In this paper, a definition composed of two main dimensions of professional commitment in nursing has been introduced.