Effects of the Nursing Career Landscape to the Career Decision-Making of Graduating High School Students

Abstract

The study focused on the effects of the current nursing career landscape to the career decision-making of the graduating high school students. The research tackled the issues of the current nursing career landscape in the Philippines. It also identified the effects of the nursing career trend to the decision making of adolescents in choosing their career path. In addition, it sought to determine the variables affecting the choice of career path of the students. Moreover, the research wanted to measure the students’ awareness on the current nursing career trend. In line with this, the research also aimed to point out the factors that lead students in choosing/not choosing nursing as their course in college and future career. Lastly, this study sought to identify the student’s attitudes toward labor migration and nurse migration. The researcher used 333 bonafide graduating students of Makati to serve as the study sample. The instrument or the questionnaire utilized was checked by its reliability using the Cronbach-alpha. 0.82 was the reliability, implying that the instrument can be a good information source for the research. After the instrument has been administered to the respondents, the data gathered were encoded using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Frequency distribution, mean of means, and Pearson Chi-Square were utilized as the methods for the analysis of the results. It was found out from the results that the students, in terms of their career decisionmaking, select their course and career in the future based primarily on the availability of the opportunities in the labor market and the salary potential of those careers. However, there was no big significant difference in the mean of the personal factors. It means that the students, although they look forward to having a high-paying job, still recognize their interests and skills in choosing the career for them. The results also showed that there are still more students who did not prefer nursing as their course and career option. It was because they believed it was not the right course and career for them. Although nursing is very in-demand inside and outside the country, they still wanted a career that is in line with their interests. But for those who had nursing as course option, they believed that nursing would give them a decent career in the future. Also, it would give them the chance to make it abroad and earn high salary to support their personal and families’ needs. In terms of their views on labor migration, more students wanted to go abroad to work there, because of the vast opportunities and high salary offered. However, they wanted to go outside the country not as nurses but as other professionals.