Background & objectives: Assertiveness is a necessary skill for nurses and nursing students to effective use of knowledge and performing the professional practices. Determining assertiveness of nursing students and its barriers can help administrators in planning and solving the problems. The purpose of this study was to identify nursing students' level of assertiveness and its’ inhibiting factors.

Methods: A cross-sectional and descriptive design was used to conduct this study. The study population was all bachelor nursing students at final year, during the second half of 2013. Seventy five bachelor nursing students were selected through consensus sampling method. Data were gathered by Gambryl and Ritchie assertiveness questionnaire which was used to determine the degree of assertiveness and a researcher made inventory for determining inhibiting factors of using assertive behaviors in personal, educational and environmental dimensions. Analysis of the data was done using descriptive and inferential statistics with application of SPSS v.18.

Results: The findings showed that 68% of students had moderate and 12% of them had a low level of assertiveness. From the perspective of students, educational factors (3.61±0.78) had more roles in inhibiting assertive behavior compared to the environmental and individual factors. The item “assertiveness is not one of the criteria for clinical evaluation” owned the most score as the main barrier for assertiveness (3.70±1.15) from the nursing student’s perspective.

Conclusion: According to the results, nursing students need a preliminary training about assertive behaviors before starting the nursing program. Given the inhibitory role of education in promoting assertiveness, focusing on educating assertiveness skills by instructors of nursing in a proper environment is recommended.