Nurse professional identity: Validation of the Italian version of the questionnaire Nurse Professional Values Scale-Revised.

Abstract

Professional identity includes the best practice, the creation of ideals and professional values. It can be defined like attitudes, values, knowledge, beliefs and skills that are common among a special professional category. Professional identity is also connected to social roles of a particular profession. Therefore, professional identity includes individual experience and self-image of a particular category about its profession and its social image. Professional identity is the foundation for operation and conception of professional role. Studies show that nurses who have obtained professional identity are more flexible when facing with role changes and this is reflected on best practice and the patient's welfare. To validate the Italian version of Nurse Professional Values Scale - Revised (NPVS-R), conducted by Weis and Schank. 115 selected students of the first year by University La Sapienza in Rome took part in the validation of the questionnaire among. The internal consistency analysis of the five psychometric properties for nurse professional values suggests that Cronbach's Alpha is 0.915, which means that reliability shows sufficient levels. The Italian translation carried out in this NPVS-R questionnaire study shows good internal reliability and consistency and could be considered a useful tool to evaluate the concept of professional identity in nursing students.