A Study of the Career Anchor and the Professional Commitment of the Registered Nurses in BSN Program

Suggestions for nursing educators and administrators are to help nurses understand their career anchors, to strengthen their motivation to work in a chosen career that is a meaningful part of a lifelong pursuit, to raise their job satisfaction, and thus to reinforce their professional commitment.

Abstract

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to explore the career anchor, the professional commitment and the related factors for registered nurses (RN) in a bachelor of science in nuraing (BSN) degree. A total of 183 RN students were selected and administered the Career Anchor Scale and the Nursing Professional Commitment Scale. They were first-year students selected from the nursing departments of a medical university and a technical university in the central part of Taiwan. The findings were as follow: The subjects exhibited a high level of professional commitment with the average score of 3.07 under a 4-point Likert scale. The score of professional commitment was significantly associated with the score of job satisfaction, and the score of family and organizations supports. The security/life career anchor was the predominate anchor, followed by the challenge/technical/service anchor (CTS). In the career anchor, the higher the CTS competence scores, the higher the professional commitment scores. And the higher the autonomy/ creativity (AC) competence scores, the lower the professional commitment scores. The nursing interest, the realization of nursing as caring, job security, the motivation of education, the satisfaction toward the organizations, the career anchors of CTS and AC are the predicting factors of professional commitment. The professional commitment could be explained by 53.6% of the variance in the predicting factors. Based on the findings, suggestions for nursing educators and administrators are to help nurses understand their career anchors, to strengthen their motivation to work in a chosen career that is a meaningful part of a lifelong pursuit, to raise their job satisfaction, and thus to reinforce their professional commitment.