Nursing in the opinion of high school student

Introduction
Image and prestige are factors that strongly determine the choice of future career. The period of secondary school education is the time of making decisions concerning further education and, consequently, profession. People who would like to make their future in nursing should make their decisions based on the real image of this job.

Aim of the study
The objective of the study was to get feedback on the opinions and beliefs of high school students about nursing.

Material and methods
The study included 172 high school students. The study used the diagnostic survey method with the author’s survey questionnaire.

Results
About 75% of the respondents recognized an important role of the nurse in a therapeutic team, but only 19.77% perceived this profession as independent. The biggest group of students assessed nurses’ work as “good” (43.60%), the smallest group as “very bad” (1.74%). Half of the respondents formed their opinion about nursing based on the Internet, and 18.60% based it on their own experience. The largest percentage of high school students considered factors that might encourage them to choose nursing as a profession: job satisfaction (61.63%), guaranteed employment (50.00%), and high salary (46.51%).

Conclusions
Adolescents recognize an important role of nurses in the therapeutic team; however, they lack knowledge about their broad professional competence. It is important to improve the image of nursing in society.