Öz
The research was carried out to determine the views of senior nursing students about working at a psychiatric clinic after graduation.
The research has a phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research models. 23 nursing senior students were involved in the study. A questionnaire including the demographic characteristics of the students and a semi-structured interview form were developed by the researchers to collect the data.
The results demonstrated that the mean age of the students was 21.5±0.51, 71.7% chose the nursing profession voluntarily, and 95.7% were pleased to choose the nursing profession. The categories that emerged as a result of the analysis were the perception of mental diseases, views about an individual with a mental illness, views about psychiatry nursing as a profession, and views about working at a psychiatry clinic.
More than half of the students expressed that they could work at a psychiatry clinic after graduation because they considered psychiatry nursing as a special and satisfying field and wanted to help individuals with mental illnesses. However, some of them stated that they could not work at a psychiatry clinic as they felt fear/anxiety about these individuals, might be affected by this situation, and could not communicate with them.
The majority of the students wanted to work at a psychiatry clinic, but some of them experienced anxiety/fear. Therefore, the study demonstrated that mental health and disease nursing course in nursing undergraduate program should be planned to support students to cope with their fear/anxiety towards the individuals with mental illness and to break the stigma.