Abstract
Background: Nursing professionals unanimously agree that caring is the professional core, reflecting its uniqueness and distinguishing it from other health professions. The perception of caring seems to be changing with time along with nursing students' perceptions of this topic.Aim: This integrative review was aimed at presenting an overview of changes in student considerations when choosing the nursing profession and relating to the caring aspect.Methods: We reviewed past literature and defined “Caring”, “Nursing”, “Nursing Career”, “Patient Care” and “Students” as their keywords on Medline, PubMed, Embase and Web of Science. There was also conducted a manual search in order to find other potentially suitable resources.Results: The findings indicate that the concept of caring continues to be ambiguous and difficult to define, and demonstrate a different approach to caring as compared to the past.Conclusion: Caring is now considered more of a skill and less of a substance. The nursing education system should give their students a pack of tools that will develop an approach that consists of extensive practical knowledge alongside a strong understanding and empathy for the patient, in order to provide human and sensitive care.
Highlights
Nursing professionals unanimously agree that caring is the professional core, reflecting its uniqueness and distinguishing it from other health professions
Caring is considered more of a skill and less of a substance
The nursing education system should give their students a pack of tools that will develop an approach that consists of extensive practical knowledge alongside a strong understanding and empathy for the patient, in order to provide human and sensitive care
Summary
Nursing professionals unanimously agree that caring is the professional core, reflecting its uniqueness and distinguishing it from other health professions. Setting aside the “Florence Nightingale” reputation of compassion and individual patient attention, nursing is a constantly evolving profession that requires professional expertise in line with developing social needs. As they are responsible, inter alia, for confirming patient diagnoses and educating the public on essential health issues, nurses are an integral element within the public health infrastructure (American Nursing Association, 2020; Institute of Medicine US, 2011). By definition, nursing is all about helping individuals who are sick and weak, people who lack sufficient knowledge and sometimes even the ability or desire to execute daily functions (Shahaf, 2009) Underlying this definition is an idealistic professional and unequivocal perception by which the nurses are required to position the patient at the center of their activities, as if they had only one patient to tend to.
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