NURSING AND SOCIAL-WORK STUDENTS INITIAL ORIENTATION TOWARDS THEIR STUDIES

The worldwide rapid social and economic changes also give challenges t o health and social policies, Nowadays there is a need for integration of health and social services and self-managed work teams, which can improve the quality of services offered to clients, This is especially a challenge to nursing and social work education, One approach to res pond to this challenge is to develop students' self-direction during t raining, Today self-direction is one of the central principles in adul t learning, as one of its aims is to prepare students to manage change s in society, In this study, nursing (n = 68) and social work (n = 71) students' orientation towards their studies was investigated at the b eginning of their professional education, The data were collected by a questionnaire developed for the study, The results suggest that, in g eneral, both nursing and social work students are orientated actively towards their studies, However, nursing students were less willing to participate in planning their studies than were social work students. Moreover, nursing students were more teacher-directed than social work students.