Investigating the effect of retraining courses (by presenting periodic seminars and posters) on nurses' moral development

With the proliferation of ethical issues in nursing care and the placement of people in situations where lack of reasoning power confuses them, there is a need for more and more research on the ethical evolution of nurses.  The aim of this study was to investigate the level of moral development of nurses working in Golestan Medical Center in Ahvaz and the effect of retraining courses (by providing periodic seminars and posters) on the growth rate of moral development of nurses. 

This study was performed by quasi-experimental method. The study population was all nurses working in specialized and sub-specialized teaching-medical Golestan hospital in Ahvaz. In this study, 73 nurses were calculated according to the same article and according to 4 units, there was a significant difference between trained and untrained scores. According to the conditions of entry, they entered the study and completed the Kelberg Moral Development Questionnaire before and after the intervention. Admission requirements were a bachelor's degree in nursing and at least one year of work experience.The Kelberg Ethics Development Questionnaire consists of two parts: demographic information and the nursing riddle test. The nursing riddle test includes 6 scenarios of infants with severe abnormalities, compulsory medication, adult demand for death, familiarization of a new nurse, medication error, and patients in the later stages of the disease. Our intervention, which included holding a seminar on ethics in three time intervals with an interval of 3 months and installing the poster "Ethical codes in nursing" in different parts of the hospital in this time interval in dimensions (60×90) and with colored shapes. Questionnaire was completed before and after the intervention by nurses having the conditions of entry.  The results were compared and reviewed after collecting data through SPSS software and using descriptive statistics and calculating means and percentage and frequency. 

In the demographic information section, other than the place of service, other variables were not related to moral evolution. In the moral decision section, which is the first question of the questionnaire for each scenario. Increased moral decision making after training in the infant scenario with severe anomalies, compulsory medication, familiarization of new and adult nurses with severe disease in the final stages were statistically significant. (P<0.001) Comparison of the mean total score of moral thinking of nurses before and after training showed that the difference between the mean score of moral thinking in each scenario was statistically significant and the total score of moral thinking of participants was (P<0.001) and it has increased.

This study showed that holding retraining courses and installing posters has an effective role in improving the moral development of nurses.