Nursing Interns Show Four Distinct Professional Values Profiles, Study Finds

Professional values are widely regarded as the ethical cornerstone of nursing practice, yet much research on the topic has relied on aggregate scores that treat student nurses as a single, uniform group. A cross-sectional study published in BMC Nursing takes a different approach. Using two complementary statistical methods, latent profile analysis and network analysis, researchers identified four distinct subgroups of professional values among nursing interns in China and mapped how demographic and psychological variables interact differently within each subgroup.

The study was conducted between September 2025 and November 2025. Nursing interns in the middle phase of their clinical practicum were recruited by convenience sampling from four tertiary general hospitals located in Hubei, Hunan, and Shandong provinces, representing central and eastern China. In total, 1,337 nursing interns participated, the majority of whom were female. Data collection relied on validated instruments covering several dimensions of professional development: the Nurses’ Moral Courage Scale, the Nursing Professional Values Scale, the Professional Commitment Scale, and the General Self-Efficacy Scale.

Rather than averaging these responses into a single score, the research team applied latent profile analysis, a person-centered statistical method that sorts individuals into unobserved subgroups based on shared response patterns. This approach is designed to capture heterogeneity that variable-centered methods, which focus on relationships between variables across the whole sample, can obscure. The analysis identified four profiles of professional values. The largest group, accounting for 53.0 percent of interns, fell into a Mid-Low profile. A further 20.7 percent belonged to a Mid-High profile, while 16.2 percent showed Low professional values and 10.1 percent showed High values. The distribution indicates that most interns clustered around the middle of the values spectrum, with relatively small proportions at either extreme. The authors frame these subtypes as a potential basis for developing personalized educational strategies and optimizing clinical education practices.

After the profiles were established, the team turned to network analysis to examine the relational structure among the study variables within each subgroup. Network analysis treats measured variables as interconnected nodes and estimates how strongly each node relates to the others. In this study, the researchers used standardized expected influence as the measure of centrality, allowing them to compare which variables carried the greatest weight in each profile-specific network. The results revealed profile-specific centrality patterns. Age exhibited the highest standardized expected influence in both the Low profile, with a value of 1.929, and the Mid-High profile, with a value of 1.969. Education level, by contrast, showed the highest standardized expected influence in the Mid-Low profile, at 1.997, and in the High profile, at 1.533. In other words, the variables that appeared most influential differed depending on which values profile a nursing intern belonged to, underscoring the heterogeneity the study set out to document.

The authors are careful to qualify these network findings. Some centrality estimates showed limited stability, particularly those with case-dropping bootstrap coefficients below 0.25. Because of this, the researchers state that the findings should be interpreted as exploratory and should not be considered definitive evidence of node importance. The identified variables are described as potentially meaningful correlates within specific profile networks, rather than established drivers of professional values. Several limitations also follow directly from the study design. As a cross-sectional investigation, it captured a single moment in the middle of the clinical practicum and cannot establish causal relationships between demographic factors, psychological resources, and professional values. The sample was recruited through convenience sampling rather than random selection, and the study reported no applicable clinical trial number, reflecting its observational character. Despite those caveats, the study offers a methodological contribution to nursing education research. By integrating latent profile analysis with network analysis, the design moves beyond aggregate scores and shows how the same variables can occupy different positions in different subgroups. The authors suggest that the four profiles and their associated network patterns may inform future hypothesis-driven research on nursing professional values and educational practices.

Subject of Research: Professional values profiles and network patterns among nursing interns

Article Title: Professional values among nursing interns: a latent profile analysis and network analysis study

Article References: Li, Y., Cai, J., & Li, Y. (2026). Professional values among nursing interns: a latent profile analysis and network analysis study. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05574-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05574-z

Keywords: nursing interns, professional values, latent profile analysis, network analysis, cross-sectional study, nursing education, clinical practicum, expected influence, moral courage, self-efficacy, professional commitment, China