Caring Behaviour Perceived by Nursing Students; Gender Perspective

Objective: This study aims to determine the care perceptions of nursing students according to the gender perspective. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional, quantitative, and descriptive comparative study. In this study, the total sample of nursing students (n=495), consisting of Turkish students (n=334) and International students (n=161) from class/year one to four in the Faculty of Nursing were analysed. The data of the study were collected using the Student Assessment Forms and the Care Behavior Inventory and evaluated by IBM SPSS version 22.0. Nurses’ and patients’ caring behavior perceived by nursing students and other related factors were compared using both inferential and descriptive statistics. Results: In this study, 69.9% of the participants were female, 30.1% were male. While the total score of the female nursing students was 5.23±0.69, the score of the male nursing students was 5.18±0.81. The difference between the total and subgroups’ score of the students according to their gender was not statistically significant. But, there is significant difference in the sub-dimensions of the scale according to the gender of the participants with some characteristics. Conclusion: In this study, no significant difference was found between gender and perception of care in the scale total mean score of the participants. However, when some subgroups were analyzed according to gender, significant differences were found. In addition, the mean scores of female students were higher than those of male students.