Objective: To investigate the status of professional identity of undergraduate nursing students at different admission levels before clinical practice, and analyze the differences and reasons, so as to provide basis for guiding the development of nursing students’ professional identity. Methods: A total of 186 nursing students (including the first batch of admissions from senior middle school, the second batch admissions from senior middle school of secondary college, and the admissions from junior college graduates) were surveyed by using occupational identity scale before clinical practice. The scale contains four dimensions: career moratorium, career diffusion, career achievement, and career foreclosure. The highest-scoring dimension is recorded as the status type of professional identity for each nursing student. If a student’s highest score is not unique, his type is considered ambiguous. Results: 1) 35.5% of them are in the status of career moratorium, 1.6% of them are in the status of career diffusion, 52.2% of them reach to the status of career achievement, 2.2% of them are in the status of career foreclosure, 8.6% of them are ambiguous. 2) The ANOVA analysis and further LSD-test of four dimensions of the three categories of nursing students found that only the difference in the career achievement dimension is statistically significant (P < 0.05), the second batch of admitted nursing students from senior middle school had the highest score, followed by the nursing students admitted from junior college graduates, and the first batch of admitted nursing students from senior middle school has the lowest score, the remaining differences are not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Conclusions: Nearly half of the undergraduate nursing students have not reached the career achievement. The second batch of admitted nursing students has the highest professional achievement, and the first batch has the lowest. Nursing educators should take targeted measures to.............
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