Objectives: to identify undergraduate nursing students' entrepreneurial tendency at a public university.
Methods: cross-sectional study, with a quantitative approach, with 135 undergraduate nursing students from a public university in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Data were collected using a socio-professional characterization form and a General measure of Enterprising Tendency test and analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Results: among the five entrepreneurial tendencies, students presented results equal or above average in two dimensions: Drive and Determination (82.2%) and Need for Success (51.1%). The Creative tendency was the dimension with the highest percentage of participants below the average (68.9%). However, students in research or extension groups scored equal or above average in all five entrepreneurial tendencies.
Conclusions: students showed low entrepreneurial tendencies, indicating the need for a broader approach to the subject in nursing education.