OBJECTIVES: Human resources is a serious problem in the Hungarian health care system. It would be necessary that the nursing profession to be more popular among youth as well as students to stay in health care who are in health education. Our goal was to assess further plans of students and how their parents' qualifications affect their decision. We would like to assess the motivation of students who are involved in health education and how many of them would work in healthcare later. We surveyed social judgement of nursing profession and the ranking of nursing values based on students' opinions.

METHODS: The study was descriptive, cross-sectional and quantitative. The students before graduation (n=183) and students attending secondary and higher health education (n=71) were studied. The location of examination was all of the school in the city of Szombathely, which are part of nursing education. Survey was conducted between September and October, 2016 using self-constructed questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and Khi-square test were made with Microsoft Excel 2013, results were reported with frequency range of reliability and were considered significant at p<0.05.

RESULTS: For high school students stated that impact of parents' educations is prevailed, both the father (p<0.01) and mother (p<0.01) were significant. It is more common to choose nursing profession for students where someone in his acquaintance works as a nurse (p<0.05). According to high school students the nursing headcount is sufficient as opposed to opinions of nursing students (p<0.01). In both groups the responsibility was at the top, high school students think that nurses do not have much responsibility while their views are contrary to this (p=0.0083).

CONCLUSIONS: The nursing profession is unpopular among Hungarian students, and most of the nursing students are uncertain about staying in health care field. Change of attitude is needed in the society.