Revista de prevención y atención de la salud

Abstracto

Designing the public health career

Dr. Hisae Nakatani

Background Public health nurses in Japan are nationally licensed professionals who serve as members of local governments and provide services to local residents. To provide top-notch public health services, public health nurses must quickly forge their professional identities. However, it is unclear how their professional identity is structured. Our objectives were to explore the professional identity structures of public health nurses employed by government organizations and to define the traits that shape their identities.

Methods: 670 professional nurses employed by regional government organizations participated in questionnaire surveys. The measurement indices of professional nurses' professional identities, core characteristics, and evaluations reflecting the components of self-respect are included in the research items. We conducted exploratory factor analysis after examining the examined items. We also gave names to the factors and examined their suitability and reliability. Associations with the characteristics or components of self-respect were also examined.

Results: 309 effective responses (effective response ratio: 88.2%) from 350 respondents (52.2%) were examined. Twelve components were found through item and factor analysis, and these factors—"career advancement intention," "confidence in one's own talents," and "occupational affinity"—were divided into three groups. A positive association was found between the self-esteem scales and the professional identity measure. The 12 items together have a coefficient of 0.89. Age, number of professional nurses in the workplace, and years of experience as professional nurses were found to differ significantly from the other variables.

Conclusion: Three components were discovered that make up the professional identity of the ENP.