Student Perceptions of the Links Between Nursing and the Liberal Arts

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which nursing students are aware of the importance of liberal arts in their professional education. Based on a survey of nursing students and alumnae from a small, New York state college, the project further explored the channels through which they became aware of the significant links between these two aspects of their education. One finding is that nursing students give a relatively high weight to the importance of the liberal arts in their total learning process. The more important conclusion is that students, on the whole, believe that they have made the links between liberal arts and nursing themselves. To the extent that other agents help forge these links, the most important seem to be nursing labs and clinicals, other nursing students, and nursing texts and modules. Students perceive that nursing faculty help draw links more often than liberal arts faculty, but neither rank very high.