Assessment of Nurse’s Perception Towards Their Profession and Factors Affecting It in Debre Berhan Town Governmental Health Institution, Debre Berhan, Ethiopia

Background: Nursing is a health care profession, which is focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities; so that they can attain, maintain, or recover optimum health. Nursing care is given for individuals of all age groups and different cultural backgrounds who are healthy and ill in a holistic manner based on the individual's physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, social, and spiritual needs. Objective: To assess Nurses’ Perception and towards Nursing profession and factors affecting it in Debre Birhan town governmental health institutions, Debre Berhan Ethiopia. Methods: Institution based quantitative cross sectional study design was used to assess nurse’s perception and related factors among professional nurses. Convenience sampling method was used to select 105 intended study participants from Debre Berhan Referral Hospital and Debre Berhan town governmental health centers. Data collection was carried out using structured questionnaire. The collected data was entered using SPSS version 20.00 for further analysis. Odds ratio was calculated for related factors with 95% confidence interval (CI). A p-value < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: Out of 105 sample respondents 103 agreed to participate with the response rate of 98.1%. More than half of nurses 54(52.4%) were females and 49(47.6%) were males. More than half of nurses 54(52.4%) had good perception towards nursing. A significant Association was seen between monthly income level and perception of nursing (P < 0.05). In addition monthly income and perception of important aspects of nursing had shown an association. Conclusion: Majority of nurses who participated in this study had good perception towards nursing. More than half of participants want to migrate to other countries for good career opportunity. Majority of nurses had an intention to leave their profession with the main cause of low salary. Occupational factors (salary) were identified as a leading factor which affects perception.