THE PERCEPTION OF NURSING BY FIRST-YEAR NURSING STUDENTS: A METAPHOR ANALYSIS

This study was done with the objective of revealing through metaphors the perceptions of first-year nursing students on the concept of “nursing”. This study was realized with the voluntary participation of 80 first year students of the Department of Nursing at the School of Health Sciences of a university and who accepted to participate in the study. It was requested that every nursing student should complete the sentence, “Nursing is like..., because...” with the objective of revealing their metaphors for the concept of “nursing”. It was found that nursing students produced 45 different metaphors. The metaphors constituted for the concept of “nursing” by the nursing students were treated in seven categories. It was determined that the categories in which the students produced the most metaphors were mother, to assist, life, to be responsible, physician’s assistant, cornerstone and a difficult profession. In conclusion, the metaphors can be used as a strong research tool in understanding, revealing and explaining the cognitive images of the nursing student about the concept of nursing. There is a need to study the concept of nursing through metaphors in different year students and nurses