Reasons for earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing in a border city of northern Mexico.

Abstract

Objective: Analyze the reasons of earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing in a public university located at the border area of northern Mexico. Methodology: Quantitative, transversal, and descriptive study, composed of 470 students of two entering-level campuses of the bachelor's degree in nursing, carried out through a census sampling. An instrument of reasons for earning a bachelor’s degree in health science validated in a Mexican population (a=0.834) was applied through electronic surveys, comprised of 30 items, and integrated by six major factors as reasons for pursuing it. Results: Mean age was 19.28 years (SD= 2.549), females predominate with 76.4%, single people with 93.3%, those with no children and no job with 95.4% and 67.6%, respectively. Overall high school average was 8.7 (SD= 0.66), 70.2% received career orientation, 47.2% elected nursing major as their first choice, and 70% because they liked it. The most important factors as pursuing motives were prestige and accomplishment, altruism and knowledge, and health. Significant differences were found among the gender and altruism and knowledge factors, and external and affiliative motivation, amid those who received and didn’t receive career orientation and the prestige and accomplishment factors, between the assignment campuses and the factor of working with people. Conclusions: The need for designing an instrument to measure the motives for electing a major in nursing to explore the distinctive sociological and philosophical components, as well as the inclusion of demographic and educational variables, has been made evident.