Examining the level of compliance with professional ethics in nursing practice from the point of view of nurses, students and patients

Observance of ethical standards in nursing work leads to the improvement of nursing services. The aim of this study was to determine the level of professional ethics in nursing practice from the perspective of nurses, students and patients of medical centers of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences and Social Security in 2019.

This descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study was performed with the participation of 299 nurses, 287 nursing students by census method and 384 hospitalized patients using cluster sampling in internal medicine and surgery wards of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences and Social Security. The research instrument was a questionnaire consisting of 31 questions specific to the nursing community, 22 questions for the student community and 22 specific questions for the patient community. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Chi-square, correlation and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests.                 

Observance of professional ethics from the perspective of nurses, students and patients in terms of responsibility were 51.5%, 44.6% and 61.7%, respectively, improving the quality of patient care, respectively, 39.1%, 78.7% and 56.2%, respectively. Patient respect was 59.5%, 36.2% and 63.2%, respectively. Also, there was a significant difference between the perspective of nurses, students and patients in all three dimensions (P <0.05) and the highest average of professional ethics was observed in nurses.                                         

According to the research results, training and holding effective retraining courses for nursing staff and also teaching professional ethics codes in the course and related workshops to nursing students with the aim of raising their awareness and performance and quality of optimal health care.