The effect of nurses social support perceptions and hope levels on fertility motivation

The nursing profession; It is a group of occupations that work stressful, busy shifts and the concept of vacation differs from other occupations. Due to the working environment, conditions and form, problems with child care may occur, their need for social support increases and it is thought that this situation may affect fertility motivations. With this descriptive and analytical study, it was aimed to examine nurses' perceptions of social support, hope levels and fertility motivations. The population of the research of 396 nurses working in a training and research hospital. 216 nurses who agreed to participate in the study voluntarily formed the sample of the study. Before the study, necessary permissions were obtained from the Kırşehir Training and Research Hospital Chief Physician and Kırşehir Provincial Health Directorate, and the ethics committee permission from the Kırşehir Ahi Evran University Non-Interventional Ethics Committee. The data were collected face-to-face with the Introductory Information Form, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Dispositional Hope Scale (DHS) and Childbearing Motivations Scale (CMS) between February and March 2021. The data were analyzed with the SPSS 25 package program and descriptive statistics were used in presenting the data. The conformity of the data to the normal distribution was examined with the values of kurtosis and skewness, it was found that it showed normal distribution, and the Independent T test, One-Way Analysis of Variance, Pearson Correlation tests, Multiple Linear Regression analysis and Post-Hoc analyzes were performed for further analysis. Of the nurses included in the research, 69% are women, 33,8% are between the ages of 20-25, 54,6% are married, 72,7% are undergraduate graduates, and 65,7% have income equal to their expenses. The mothers of 98,1% of the nurses are alive, 53,8% of them live in different provinces, 64,6% of them have a close relationship with their mother, 86,1% of them have a alive father, 59,1% It was determined that he lived in the same city with his father, and 59,6% had a close relationship with his father. Looking at the working years of the nurses participating in the study, it was found that 28,7% of them were 16 years or more. Nurses' mean MSPSS scale total score average is 70,01±13,61, DHS scale total score average is 51,65±7,93, Positive CMS subscale mean total score is 79,11±20,55, Negative CMS mean total score is 39,71±15,24. Marital status, working status of spouse and relationship with parents in nurses' MSPSS subscale and scale total score averages; Age and economic status in the STS subscale and scale total score averages; It was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of gender and occupation in the Positive CMS subscale, and gender, marital status, education level, and employment status of the spouse in the Negative CMS subscale (p< ,05). It was found that there was a low level (r= ,287) positive correlation between MSPSS and DHS, and a low level (r= ,264) positive correlation between MSPSS and Positive MHCS (p< .05). It was determined that the MSPSS variable had a statistically significant effect on Positive MHCS (t= 3,833, p< ,05). A one-unit increase in MSPSS variable causes a ,399 increase in Positive CMS (β= ,399). It is seen that 7% of the change in positive CMS was explained (R^2= ,070). According to the research findings, it can be said that nurses' social support perceptions, hope levels and childbearing motivations affect each other at a low level and it is recommended to conduct advanced studies. Keywords: Fertility motivation, hope, nurse, social support.