'Psychiatric nursing was great, but I want to be a "real" nurse': is psychiatric nursing a realistic choice for nursing students?

The present paper reports the results of a quasi-experimental study that examined the relationship between exposure to the theory and practice of psychiatric nursing and the desirability of psychiatric nursing as a future career choice. A time series design was utilized to enable a comparison between pre- and post-test scores. A significant increase in the popularity of psychiatric nursing was evident in the experimental group in the post-test phase, while no significant change was detected in the control group. Despite this increase, a large number of students from the experimental group indicated their reluctance to undertake a career in psychiatric nursing without first consolidating their skills in the medical-surgical area. This situation reflects an image of nursing that is contrary to the caring philosophy it purports to embrace, but which appears to favour certain areas of nursing practice at the expense of others.