Evaluating of compliance with professional ethical standards in nursing practice from Nursing Staff's Viewpointsin Tehran University of Medical Sciences

Nursing practice is naturally a moral one and health care quality is largely dependant on how nurses fulfil their duties. The present study aimed at assessing compliance with professional ethical standards in nursing practice from nurse's perspectives. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 138 nurses working in selected hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, who were selected through simple randomized sampling method. Data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire about compliance with professional ethical standards. The obtained data was analysed using SPSS 16 software, descriptive- analytical statistics, Pearson's and spearman's correlation coefficients. Most of the nurses (72.5%) had a good performance in the dimensions of responsibility, improvement of patient's care, and respect for patients. This study showed that there was a significant difference between sex and professional ethical performance quality in all the three aspects (P=0.02). Besides, a positive correlation was observed between working shifts and professional ethical performance (r=0.92). Regarding the findings of the present study, it seems that determining nursing working shifts can be effective in improving nurse's professional ethical performance.