The lack of qualified mental health nurses is at critical level with the problem likely to worsen as the aging mental health nursing workforce retires. This study investigates the career preferences of undergraduate nursing students by comparing preferences at the start, middle, and end of the Bachelor of Nursing program. The comparison of the cohorts gave an indication of the change in preferences over the intervening years. It replicates research completed in 1992, 1997, and 2001, and develops a profile of nursing career preferences and the rationale underpinning those preferences in a cohort of students (n = 150) who began their Bachelor of Nursing studies in 2007 and completed in 2009. The main findings included that, like the previous studies, mental health nursing is one of the least desirable career choices for most nurses at the start of their course and remains so as they approach graduation. The reasons change but the outcome remains the same. The current system of using the Bachelor of Nursing award to produce mental health nurses in Australia does not encourage nurses to consider a career in mental health nursing. Which begs the question: where will mental health nurses in the future come from?
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 March 2015.
All research outputs
#16,359,651
of 27,468,086 outputs
Outputs from International Journal of Mental Health Nursing
#1,307
of 1,625 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#109,630
of 183,794 outputs
Outputs of similar age from International Journal of Mental Health Nursing
#16
of 20 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,468,086 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 39th percentile – i.e., 39% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,625 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.0. This one is in the 19th percentile – i.e., 19% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 20 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 20th percentile – i.e., 20% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
