Nurses distress in intensive care unit: a survey in teaching hospitals

In spite of increasing advances in technology, medical equipments, costs, geriatric population, consideration to ethical and legal issues has increased in nursing profession. This study aimed to explore ethical codes and consideration of ethical issues and severity of ethical distress experienced by nurses at intensive care units.A cross-sectional survey using questionnaire was conducted by a census of nurses in intensive care units in educational and treatment centers of Hamadan.Nurses value most the ethical codes related to responsibility (95.1%), accountability (95.1%), patient support (77.3%), secret keeping (83.4%), and honesty (78.5%). They studied patient rights statement 2.47 times with standard deviation of 2.86. Only 50.3 percent of nurses had education about professional ethics. Nurses had mean of mark in severity of ethical distress 99.34 ±46.61.Severity of ethical distress was moderate in nurses. There was not significant relationship between demographic data and severity of ethical distress. There are more needs to assess for effects and effective factors on ethical distress in intensive care units nurses.