Psychiatric nursing: an unpopular choice

Accessible summary Psychiatric nursing is not a popular career choice among undergraduate nursing students after they completed their studies. Students in this study named personal factors and the working environment as the most important reasons for not choosing psychiatric nursing as a career. Other reasons were the unprofessional behaviour of professional nurses and the learning environment. Therefore, the recommendations of this study focus on implementing creative teaching strategies and to improve the learning experiences of the nursing students. Abstract Research studies in the United States, the U nited K ingdom, N ew Z ealand and A ustralia suggest that students do not consider psychiatric nursing as a popular career option. According to this research, there is a widespread concern about the nursing shortages in psychiatry. The demand for mental health services continues to grow and there is a need for strategies to recruit nurses for this specialized field. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors preventing undergraduate nursing students in S outh A frica ( SA ) from choosing psychiatric nursing as a career. A qualitative research design that aimed to explore and describe was used. Data were collected through the N ominal G roup T echnique. A sample of convenience of 27 final year nursing students from the S chool of N ursing at the U niversity of the F ree S tate as well as the F ree S tate S chool of N ursing, situated in B loemfontein ( SA ), voluntarily participated in this research. The following categories emerged from the content analysis of the data: personal factors, working environment, unprofessional behaviour, learning environment and the unclassified category. Psychiatric nursing as a career choice is in a predicament and nursing schools need to implement practical strategies to recruit future nurses for this field.