en عمومى General پژوهشي Research <div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Background</strong>: Determining the professional image perceptions of the first-year nursing students who have recently chosen the nursing profession is of great importance in delineating the profession profile. The present study aimed to determine the image perception of first-year nursing students and its related factors.<br> <strong>Methods</strong>: This descriptive cross-sectional research was conducted in the Fall semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. In total, 105 first-year nursing students were selected from the Nursing Department of the Faculty of Health Sciences of Bursa Uludağ University in Turkey. The study subjects were recruited randomly. A Student Identification Form and the Image Scale for the Nursing Profession were used as data collection tools. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied for analyzing the obtained data in SPSS.<br> <strong>Results</strong>: The Mean&plusmn;SD score of the Image Scale for the Nursing Profession was achieved as 149.06&plusmn;11.19. Students who had willingly selected the nursing profession gained higher scores than those of other students in professional qualifications, education, professional status, and appearance scale sub-dimensions and total scale mean scores (P<0.05). In addition, the mean scores of the female students in the sub-dimensions of education, gender, and total scale were significantly higher than those of their male counterparts (P<0.05).<br> <strong>Conclusion</strong>: The nursing students indicated a good image perception of the nursing profession. Conducting a similar study is recommended for senior nursing students and staff nurses.&nbsp;</div> Nursing, Nursing image, Professional image, Student 141 146 http://jccnc.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-310-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Dilek Yılmaz dilekk@uludag.edu.tr 10031947532846006330 10031947532846006330 Yes Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Bursa Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey.