Professional commitment and autonomy are factors influencing the retention process in the nursing profession, job satisfaction, and the quality of care in special care units. The level of education of nurses plays an important role in their ability to develop autonomy and commitment. This study was done to investigate the relationship between autonomy and professional commitment with the level of education. The present study was a cross-sectional research that was done in the special care department of hospitals. The research tools included a demographic questionnaire, and an autonomy and professional commitment questionnaire. To determine the relationship between the variables, Pearson correlation, analysis of variance, and independent t-tests were used. According to the findings, the average score of professional commitment in the special care department and the average score of professional autonomy in nurses indicated high professional commitment and professional autonomy in nurses working in these departments. Professional autonomy in the dimension of performance-based autonomy had the highest mean (25.26 ± 6.31) and in the dimension of value-based autonomy, it had the lowest mean (23.87 ± 6.15). Professional autonomy had a significant relationship with the level of education (P = 0.020). The findings revealed that there is a significant relationship between professional commitment and autonomy (P < 0.05). Therefore, familiarizing nurses with the factors affecting autonomy, including increasing and updating knowledge, can be effective in increasing autonomy.
