Perception of caring dimensions between first year nursing students and fourth year nursing students at Mut'ah University-Jordan

الملخص EN

Backgrounds: Caring has become an integral component of the curriculum that aims at developing the potentials of professional nurses.

With this in mind, the purpose of the current research is to explore differences in perception of caring dimensions between first- and fourthyear nursing students at Mutah University.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design was conducted.

Data were collected from 254 students who are in the first and fourth year in the faculty of nursing at Mutah University - Jordan.

Results: First year nursing students had statistically significantly higher scores in the psychosocial domain of caring (3.95 ± 0.77) compared with fourth year nursing students (3.37 ± 0.95), t (190) = 4.60, p = 0.050.

Fourth year nursing students had statistically significantly higher scores in the professional and technical domain of caring (4.69 ± 0.25) compared with first year nursing students (4.42 ± 1.31), t (190) = 2.05, p = 0.042.

Conclusions: Perception of caring dimensions is subject to change, it is not the same among students at different academic levels in the nursing program, and there is a need to evaluate every nursing program to pinpoint the areas of change in student's perception of caring in order to find out missing areas of care provided to the clients.