Professionalism and associated factors among nurses working in Hadiya zone public hospitals, Southern Ethiopia. A Facility based cross sectional study (quantitative and qualitative method)

Introduction: Professionalism is a conceptualization of obligations, attributes, interactions, attitudes, and role behaviors required for professionals with individual clients and to the society as a whole. Despite there is a known effect of low professionalism of nurses on health care delivery system, the study determining professionalism and affecting factors in Ethiopia is limited in to a few numbers. Therefore this study was aimed to assess perceived level of professionalism and associated factors among nurses working in Hadiya Zone public hospitals, south Ethiopia. Methods: An institution based concurrent mixed cross sectional study was conducted from May 09 to June 09/2022. A total of 376 nurses were selected by using Computer generated Simple random sampling techniques for quantitative study whereas Purposive sampling technique was used to select qualitative study participants. Epi data version 4.6 was used to enter the data whereas Statistical package for social science version 25 was used for the analysis of quantitative data. Ordinal logistic regression model was used to identify effects of independents on outcome variable. Results: A total of 360 nurses participated in the study with a response rate of 95.7%. The overall low perceived professionalism among nurses working in Hadiya zone found to be 40.3%. Variables such as Educational status (AOR= 0.045 (0.021, 0.096), Sense of accomplishment (AOR= 3.21(1.85, 5.55), and participating in professional associations (AOR= 5.302(2.82, 9.96) were significantly associated with professionalism. Qualitative study finding showed Salary, training, upgrading education; undermining nursing profession, inadequate facilities were the raised influencing factors of professionalism. Conclusion: This study revealed that professionalism among nurses was low and the associated factors were; level of education, taking training, participating in professional organizations, and sense of accomplishment. Ethiopian nursing association and Ministry of Health should focus on developing nurses professionalism.