Paper Title
Nursing Students� Perception Regarding Nursing Program: A Descriptive Study Of Four Cohorts

Abstract
Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify the nursing students� perception of nursing as a profession and factors influencing this perception. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to achieve the study aim. A convenient sample of 120 nursing students enrolled in the nursing program at the college of Nursing, King Saud bin Abdul-Aziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh participated in this study and classified equally to Pre-professional program years and professional program years. Self-Administered Questionnaire used for data collection. It consists of two parts: Part I include questions related to sociodemographic characteristics of the study subjects and Part II used to explore nursing students� perceptions of nursing as a profession with total scores ranging from 18 to 36, the greatest the score the more positive the perception. Results: The mean age of study subjects were 20.33+ 1.3 S.D. and the majority of them were single. The majority of students� families allowed them to join nursing college (72.5%). Around half of the participants were self-motivated to join nursing (40.8%). Regarding the perception of nursing as a profession there was a difference in mean score between the Pre-professional and professional program years (29.3 + 1.87 S.D. and 30.22 + 2.1 S.D. Respectively). The study results revealed a positive significance correlation between the level of education and perception (r = 0.212*, p = 0.02). Conclusion: The nursing students� perceptions of nursing as a profession are positive among the majority of the study group and higher in professional program years than Pre-professional program years. Index Terms�Nursing Profession, Perception