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Excerpt
To examine the humanitarian attitudes of nursing students, a crosssectional study was conducted. Both humanitarian and cynical attitudes were measured using the Eron Cynical and Humanitarianism Scales, which were modified by the investigator to include these attitudes toward patients and patient care. In total, 307 generic baccalaureate nursing students (163 beginning students and 144 seniors) participated from three public programs in New Jersey.
Based on the findings, senior students' cynical attitudes were lower than beginning students. Interestingly, the humanitarian attitudes of students were not increased significantly over time. This phenomenon demonstrated that humanitarianism and cynicism are not on one continuum because the decrease in cynicism did not result in an increase in humanitarianism.
Although the nursing curricula developed in the institutions studied emphasized humanitarian attitudes, students were no more humanitarian toward the end of their learning experiences than they were at the beginning. In general, guidelines for baccalaureate nursing curriculum development speak to fostering humanistic attitudes of learners so that they approach patients and patient care in a humanitarian way. However, efforts must be made to incorporate humanitarianism in all aspects of the learners' nursing education experiences.
Results of this study cannot be generalized because of the nonrandom sample and the cross-sectional method of data collection. However, the results of this study can stimulate an examination of curricula in schools of professional nursing to evaluate if and how humanitarian attitudes are being fostered. Although a great deal of effort has been expended on the development of cognitive and psychomotor skills, it may well be that the affective domain has been neglected. By evaluating curricula, faculty preparation, teaching strategies, and overall learning environment, it can be determined to what extent nursing programs are providing opportunities to enhance desired attitudes for learners.
It is recommended that this study be replicated using a longitudinal approach. Perhaps examining humanitarianism and cynicism could be done in ways other than the survey questionnaire used for this study.
Faculty members can play an active part through teaching and role-modeling to ensure that humanitarian attitudes are fostered and cynical attitudes are countered. Nursing educators who foster humanitarian attitudes and behaviors will help to perpetuate the caring tradition in the education of future nurses.
