Purpose/methods: This study investigated the relationship between ethics education and training, and the use and usefulness of ethics resources, confidence in moral decisions, and moral action/activism through a survey of practicing nurses and social workers from four United States (US) census regions. Findings: The sample (n = 1215) was primarily Caucasian (83%), female (85%), well educated (57% with a master's degree). no ethics education at all was reported by 14% of study participants (8% of social workers had no ethics education, (...) versus 23% of nurses), and only 57% of participants had ethics education in their professional educational program. Those with both professional ethics education and in-service or continuing education were more confident in their moral judgments and more likely to use ethics resources and to take moral action. Social workers had more overall education, more ethics education, and higher confidence and moral action scores, and were more likely to use ethics resources than nurses. Conclusion: Ethics education has a significant positive influence on moral confidence, moral action, and use of ethics resources by nurses and social workers. (shrink)

Background Moral sensitivity and academic integrity discernment hold paramount importance for healthcare professionals. Owing to distinct undergraduate educational backgrounds, nurses and physicians may exhibit divergent moral perspectives, academic integrity cognisance, and moral sensitivity within clinical environments. A limited number of studies have investigated the disparities and congruencies pertaining to moral sensitivity and academic ethical awareness among nursing and medical students. Objective The study compares moral sensitivity and academic ethical awareness of undergraduate nursing and medical students with and without clinical exposure. (...) Research design A self-administered cross-sectional survey conducted from January to February 2022 was used to collect data from a medical school in Hong Kong. Participants and research context A total of 545 respondents, including 137 nursing students and 408 medical students, completed the questionnaire. Ethical consideration Ethics approval of the study was obtained. Written consent was waived to maintain anonymity because completing the questionnaire was considered implied consent. Findings Both groups of undergraduates demonstrated a high level of bioethics knowledge. In terms of academic integrity, medical students were found to have a less concerned attitude towards punctuality, attendance, and skipping classes. Regarding moral sensitivity, senior medical students with clinical experience put less emphasis on decision-making involving patient participation, while senior nursing students were more hesitant in withholding treatment for incompetent patients who refused treatment. Both nursing and medical students showed decreased moral sensitivity in the ‘conflicts’ domain with increased clinical exposure. Conclusion Study findings contribute to the discussion comparing the ethical attitudes of nursing and medical students. More effort should be made in nursing and medical education to promote practices in line with high academic integrity and to develop the ability to be morally sensitive in professional settings. (shrink)

Nurses’ duties and patients’ rights have been important foci in nursing. Nurses’ rights legitimate the power and responsibility of the profession. There are few published articles on this subject in the nursing science literature. This article is a theoretical examination of nurses’ rights that aims to structure (i.e. show the internal logic of) those that have been little studied. It is based on the philosophical literature and published research. Nurses’ rights can be divided into: human and civil rights, rights based (...) on health care legislation, professional rights, and earned rights. In this context, professional rights relate to nursing and also to tasks shared with other health care professions. Analyzing nurses’ rights will help to promote these rights, improve nurses’ position both nationally and internationally, and provide possibilities for enhancing patient care. (shrink)

Patient’s duties are a topical but little researched area in nursing ethics. However, patient’s duties are closely connected to nursing practice in terms of autonomy, the best purpose of care and rethinking from the patient’s perspective. This article is a metasynthesis (N = 11 original articles) of patient’s duties, aimed to create a tentative model. In this article, a tentative model called ‘right-based duties of a patient’ was constructed. With its aid, a coherent structure of patient’s duties within different roles (...) and objects of a patient can be defined. In addition, the ethical basis, prerequisites, outcomes and risks of patient’s duties can be named. In conclusion, so-called right-based duties of a patient constitute the basic argument. Patient’s duties are not unambiguous for all patients, and the global perspective to duties has been challenged. However, due to both conceptual and practical reasons, rethinking of patient’s duties is needed. (shrink)

Background The aim of the study is to assess the knowledge, attitudes and practices among healthcare professionals in Barbados in relation to healthcare ethics and law in an attempt to assist in guiding their professional conduct and aid in curriculum development. Methods A self-administered structured questionnaire about knowledge of healthcare ethics, law and the role of an Ethics Committee in the healthcare system was devised, tested and distributed to all levels of staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados (a (...) tertiary care teaching hospital) during April and May 2003. Results The paper analyses 159 responses from doctors and nurses comprising junior doctors, consultants, staff nurses and sisters-in-charge. The frequency with which the respondents encountered ethical or legal problems varied widely from 'daily' to 'yearly'. 52% of senior medical staff and 20% of senior nursing staff knew little of the law pertinent to their work. 11% of the doctors did not know the contents of the Hippocratic Oath whilst a quarter of nurses did not know the Nurses Code. Nuremberg Code and Helsinki Code were known only to a few individuals. 29% of doctors and 37% of nurses had no knowledge of an existing hospital ethics committee. Physicians had a stronger opinion than nurses regarding practice of ethics such as adherence to patients' wishes, confidentiality, paternalism, consent for procedures and treating violent/non-compliant patients (p = 0.01) Conclusion The study highlights the need to identify professionals in the workforce who appear to be indifferent to ethical and legal issues, to devise means to sensitize them to these issues and appropriately training them. (shrink)

Within any organization (e.g. a hospital or clinic) the perception of the way things operate may vary dramatically as a function of one’s location in the organizational hierarchy as well as one’s professional discipline. Interorganizational variability depends on organizational coherence, safety, and stability. In this four-nation (Canada, Ireland, Australia, and Korea) qualitative study of 42 nurses, we explored their perception of how ethical decisions are made, the nurses’ hospital role, and the extent to which their voices were heard. These nurses (...) suggested that their voices were silenced (often voluntarily) or were not expressed in terms of ethical decision making. Finally, they perceived that their approach to ethical decision making differed from physicians. (shrink)

In this study we compared the ethical attitudes of a group of experienced, predominantly female, registered nurses (n = 67) with those of a group of final year, mixed sex, medical students (n = 125). The purpose was to determine the basis of differences in attitudes that could lead to ethical disagreements between these two groups when they came to work together. A questionnaire developed to explore ethical attitudes was administered and the responses of the two groups were compared using (...) t-tests. Because of the preponderance of females among the nurses an analysis of variance of the gender-adjusted scores for each group was also carried out. On comparing the responses, the nurses differed significantly from the medical students in a number of ethical domains. A potential source of conflict between these two groups is that the nurses were inclined to adopt the perspective of patients but the medical students identified with their profession. When corrected for the effects of gender, the differences persisted, indicating that it was discipline that determined the differences. We recommend that students of nursing and medicine receive ethics education together, and that more open dialogue between doctors and nurses with respect to their different ethical viewpoints is needed in the work setting. This article will be of interest to educators of students of medicine and nursing, as well as to doctors and nurses who are eager to improve their professional relations and thereby improve patient care. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to examine physicians' and nurses' preferences regarding the use of life-sustaining treatments for severely ill elderly patients, and the patient- and social-centered factors that influence them. Physicians and nurses working in Israeli general hospitals completed structured questionnaires referring to their preferences for using LST in three severe health conditions. The participants were also asked about factors influencing these preferences, including patients' wishes, quality of life, religiosity and the current law. Both physicians and nurses indicated (...) that they would use less LST for patients with metastatic cancer than with those suffering from the other two health conditions. Our findings indicate that the attitudes of professionals involved in these processes are influenced not only by the patient's condition but also by their professional orientations and personal values. Open communication among professionals for clarifying the various beliefs, as well as the antecedents of these beliefs, is important for the benefit of professional teams, patients and families. (shrink)