Pro-abortion attitude with context of traditional and professional identity dilemma

Abstract

Background: Nurses are in a key position for reproduction health service delivery. Therefore, it is thought that it would be important to inspect opinions of student nurses, who will be health employees in the future, about self-induced abortion to develop women health and public health. Objectives: The goal of this study is to inspect opinions of nursing students with different sociocultural specialties, about self-induced abortions. Research design: It is qualitative type and planned with ethnographic research pattern. Participants and research context: The study was conducted with 20 last-term students of Kırşehir Ahi Evran University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing, who were chosen by maximum diversity sampling technique. Interviews were made with semi-structured interview form and voice records during the study; data were analyzed with content analyzing method. Ethical considerations: Permission from the organization, university ethics committee, and personal approvals were taken from participants to conduct the research. Findings: Based on the analysis, two major themes on self-induced abortion in Turkish nursing students were found: dilemma of traditional perspective and professional identity and occupational awareness. Discussion and conclusion: It is seen that there is a dilemma between traditional point of view and professional identities about self-induced abortion for nursing students, but they had occupational awareness. It should be recommended to give information about national and international licit legislations for reproductive health, self-induced abortion, and setting up ethical discussion environments for nursing students. © The Author(s) 2020.