Aim Occupational image defined that how individual percevies his/her occupation and what is the view and impression about the profession. Occupapatinal image images that reflect the attitudes and behaviours of paediatric nurses, who have an important place in the health disparities and provide health service to children, will affect the health care of patients. This study was conducted to determine the occupational image of Turkish paediatric nurses.

Method The sample of the resarch was composed of 205 paediatric nurses working in paediatrics clinics of state and universty hospital in Ankara, the capital of Turkey and accepting to participate in the study. The data were collected by ‘Sosyodemografic Questionnaire Form’, ‘Occupational Imaj Scale (OIS)’ (36 items) developed by Jasovsky (2001) and adapted for Turkish by Özata and Aslan and ‘Occupational Image Scale for the Nursing Profession (OISNP)’ (42 items) developed by Dost and Bahçecik (2015). OIS has 4 subscales; traditional, utilitarian, professional and bureaucratic. OISNP has six factors; professional qualities, working conditions, gender, education, professional status, and appearance Data were assessed by descriptive statistics and ANOVA test.

Results The avarage age of the nurses was 29,94+5,55. Avarage of the Occupational Image Scale for the Nursing Profession was 135 and it was detemined that the nurses had the moderate level occupational image. According to age, gender, age of work, educational status and institutions of paediatric nurses, OISNP scores did not show any statistically significant difference, but they differed only according to their level of satisfaction with working as a paediatric nurse (p<0,05).

According to the Occupational Image Scale, 36.6% of the nurses participating in the survey had the traditional, 27.3% utilitarian, 24.9% professional and 11.2% bureaucratic image. It was determined that traditional nurses showed higher image perception than utilitarian (p=0.034) and professional nurses (p=0.004). It was determined that the mean scores of the OISNP subscales showed differences according to the OIS subscales and this difference was significant in the education and professional status subscales.

This difference was found between traditional nurses and professional/bureaucratic nurses in education subscale; between traditional nurses and professional/utilitarian nurses; and between bureaucratic nurses and professional/utilitarian nurses in professional status subscale.

Conclusion It has been determined that Turkish paediatric nurses have generally traditional image and these nurses have higher image for the nursing profession. Determining the perceptions of nurses occupational images and making interventions for the results are thought to be important for the development of the nursing profession.