Association between Depression and Factors Affecting Career Choice among Jordanian Nursing Students

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough stress reaction is high among nursing staff and nursing students in the Middle East and its effect on life is known, there are scant studies reporting on these clinical and social features. In addition, there are no studies reporting on factors that influence career choice among this group.AimThis study aimed to investigate factors that influence career choice among nursing students and their possible association with depressive symptoms.MethodParticipants were 150 (84.7% response rate) nursing students randomly selected from each academic year at the Nursing College/Jordan University of Science and Technology. Participants consented and completed the socio-demographic data collection sheet. The Arabic version of the Beck Depression Inventory-II Scale was used to assess participants with respect to depressive symptoms. A modified list of factors influencing career choice and a Likert scale to assess the level of sadness and the degree of religiosity were used as well.ResultsStudents ranked the most important three factors influencing their career selection as family decision, religious factors, and the desire to care for others. The prevalence of depression among the sample was 26%. Students who had a desire to care for others were less likely to suffer from depression and those who chose nursing as their career due to religious factors were significantly less depressed than those who did not. Meanwhile, students who chose nursing under family pressure or because of a lack of alternative opportunities were more depressed. The odds ratio for depressive symptoms was 0.24 when students chose nursing because of religious factors, whereas it was 4.92 when the family strongly influenced the student’s career decision and 3.61 when a nursing career was the only perceived opportunity available.ConclusionThe main factors associated with depression among this sample of nursing students were pressure from their family to choose a nursing career and having no other career or employment opportunities. Religiosity was negatively associated with depression and may act as a protective factor; however, future studies using longitudinal designs will need to confirm this hypothesis.

Prediction of depression among undergraduate nursing students in North- Western Saudi Arabia: A quantitative cross-sectional study

“…Our study discovered that both factors, selfesteem and interest in nursing, were significantly associated with depression. Our study found that self-esteem had a significant negative correlation with depression, and this result is found in other findings of previous studies (Ross et al, 2009;Yousef et al, 2017;Orth and Robins, 2013), in which higher depression scores were associated with lower selfesteem. This study has also revealed that the best significant predictor to decrease students' depression level is self-esteem.…”

“…Early research has revealed that the principal causes of stress among nursing students included: adapting to a tedious theory program, complying with overwhelming number of assignments and workload, and acclimating to the rigors of the clinical exposure (Aiken et al, 2011;Alsaqri, 2017). Prolonged subjection to stressors may result in anxiety and discontentedness and even depression (Yousef et al, 2017). Depression is considered as the disease of the twenty-first century (WHO, 2006).…”

The Relationship between Self-efficacy, Major Satisfaction and Career Decision Level of Nursing Students

“…과정에 나타나는 진로에 대한 확고한 정도를 의미하며 [6] [15,16], 진로결정 수준의 영향요인으 로 우울, 주관적 건강 등의 심리적 요인 [17,18], 진로결정 자기효능감 [1,19], 진로의사결정 유형 [11] 및 진로탐색행동 [13]…”

Prevalence of depression among students of preparing for pre-medical and pre-engineering competitive examination at coaching institutes in Jaipur city of Rajasthan

“…Similar observation was also made by Nagendra k et al (2012) 12 . On other hand studies by Yousef et al (2017) 13 , Singh A et al (2010) 14 reported a higher prevalence of depression among males than female. kumar GS et al (2012) 8 , Joseph et al (2011) 15 , observed higher prevalence of depression in female than males but statistically not significant.…”