Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the nursing images appearing in elementary school textbooks.
Method: This study targeted 130 textbooks of 13 subjects under the 7th national curriculum for elementary schools as of December 2005. Nursing-related texts, photographs, and illustrations in the textbooks were analyzed by using a content analysis method. As for the textbook analysis, two coders thoroughly read the textbooks to record nursing-related content per coding paper, respectively.
Result: The total number of nursing-related content appearing in 130 textbooks of 13 subjects was 70. More nursing-related content was exhibited in the photograph and illustration domain(N=57, 81.4%) than in the text domain(N=13, 18.6%). Nursing-related content(N=70) appeared in the order of nursing activities with 56(80.0%), nursing as a job with 10(14.3%), and others with 4(5.7%). As for the nursing image of nursing-related content, positive images were most with 30(42.9%), followed by negative images with 21(30.0%), and neutral images with 19(27.1%).
Conclusion: Nursing-related content was dealt with too little, and dependent nursing activities such as medication, and assisting roles for doctor's examinations and treatments mainly appeared. Also, the main activity place was a hospital. To introduce proper and adequate nursing activities to the students, various types of nursing-related data and material should be distributed to front line schools, teachers, main authors, and publishing companies.