The effects of a cognitive-behavioral therapy on career attitude maturity, decision making style, and self-esteem of nursing students in Korea

SummaryThe purpose of this study was to find out about the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral program for nursing student's career attitude maturity, decision making style, and self-esteem in Korea. The ultimate goal of this paper is to prepare career strategies so that they can improve career maturity development, on the basis of better understanding of one's self. The subjects were 40 nursing students from one college located in Gyeonggi Province; following the informed consent procedure, twenty participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group, and 20 were assigned to a control group. The cognitive-behavioral therapy consisted of 8-sessions and was implemented for 60 min during an 8 week period. Data were collected from May to June 2004, and analyzed χ2-test, Fisher's exact test and t-test were used in the analysis of the data. After treatment with cognitive-behavioral therapy, the experimental group significantly increased in the mean score for career attitude maturity, self-esteem compared to the control group, especially for confidence and independence. In conclusion, cognitive-behavioral therapy had a positive effect for increasing the career attitude maturity and self-esteem for nursing students in Korea. Therefore, cognitive-behavioral therapy for nursing student is recommended as a group counseling program on career maturity inventory.