Attitudes toward alternative models of unions and professional associations.

Within the occupation of nursing a synthesis of union and profession has been occurring so that "new" images of the profession and of unions are not as divergent as they traditionally were. To investigate whether nurses and nursing students are responding in terms of the traditional or the newer images of unions and professions, the relationship between motivations for entering nursing and attitudes toward unions and the profession were examined among 75 nurses and nursing students. Some support was given to the idea that nurses still respond to unions and the profession in terms of the traditional images although there was some suggestion, when comparing nursing students with nurses, that response patterns may be changing.