The need for improved quality and availability of health care has challenged nursing to professionalize. Inherent in this challenge is the need to transmit professional values to a changing student population. This cross-sectional correlation study examined relationships between students' self-actualization and their attainment of professional values during baccalaureate nursing education. Student variables of age, marital status, work experience in health care, number of completed semesters in college, and level in the nursing program were examined for relationships with professional values and self-actualization. The Nurses' Professional Orientation Scale, Short Index of Self-Actualization, and a demographic questionnaire were used to gather data. The sample consisted of 110 volunteer nursing students who were either beginning or completing an upper-division generic baccalaureate nursing program. Descriptive analyses, Pearson's correlation, Student's t-test, ANOVA, and regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Finding both a significant difference between the beginning and completing students on the measure of professional values (F = 14.76, p =.000) and a significant correlation between professional values and level in the program (r =.47, p =.000 for the total group), validated that professional values had been acquired during this baccalaureate program. None of the variables demonstrated significant relationships with either professional values or with self-actualization for the beginning students. For the completing students, professional values correlated with age (r =.28, p =.03) and number of semesters in college (r =.34, p =.009), with age being a confounding variable. Self-actualization was not related to professional values and did not differ between beginning and completing students. Age and marital status contributed a significant variance to self-actualization for the total group (r =.22, p =.004) and the completing students (r =.50, p =.000), with marital status being a confounding variable. Low reliability of the self-actualization tool with this student group (beginning group, $alpha$ =.53; completing group, $alpha$ =.56) rendered the lack of correlation between professional values and self-actualization inconclusive. Further research is needed to explore this relationship.