BackgroundToday, nurses are required to have knowledge and awareness concerning professional values as standards to provide safe and high-quality ethical care. Nurses’ perspective on professional values affects decision-making and patient care. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the importance of professional values from clinical nurses’ perspective.MethodsThe present cross-sectional study was conducted in 2016 in four educational hospitals of Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Data were collected via the Persian version of Nursing Professional Values Scale-Revised (NPVS-R) by Weis and Schank. Sampling was conducted through the use of stratified random sampling method and 250 clinical nurses participated in the study.ResultsResults indicated that the total score of the nurses’ professional values was high. (102.57 ± 11.94). From nurses’ perspective items such as “Maintaining confidentiality of patients” and “Safeguarding patients’ right to privacy” had more importance; however, “Recognizing role of professional nursing associations in shaping healthcare policy” and “Participating in nursing research and/or implementing research findings appropriate to practice had less importance. A statistically significant relationship was observed between NPVS-R mean scores and nurses’ age, work experience as well as participation in professional ethical training (P < 0.05).ConclusionsAlthough the total score related to the clinical nurses’ perspective on professional values was high, the importance of certain values was at a lower level. Owing to the emerging ethical challenges, it is indispensable to design educational programs in order to improve nurses’ awareness and understanding of the comprehensive importance of professional values. Furthermore, it is recommended that mixed methods studies should be conducted in order to design an instrument to evaluate the use of values in nursing practice.

Background: Professional values of nursing students may be changed considerably by curricula. This highlights the importance of the integration of professional values into nursing students' curricula. The present study aimed to investigate the importance of professional values from nursing students' perspective. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Data were gathered by using a two-section questionnaire consisting of demographic data and Nursing Professional Values Scale-Revised (NPVS-R). By using the stratified random sampling method, 100 nursing students were included in the study. Results: Results showed that the mean score of the students' professional values was at high level of importance (101.79 ± 12.42). The most important values identified by the students were "maintaining confidentiality of patients" and "safeguarding patients' right to privacy". The values with less importance to the students were "participating in public policy decisions affecting distribution of resources" and "participating in peer review". The professional value score had a statistically significant relationship with the students' grade point average (P < 0.05). Conclusions: In light of the low importance of some values for nursing students, additional strategies may be necessary to comprehensively institutionalize professional values in nursing students.

Background: The process of learning the professional values is started from the student's entering to the university and to the workplace. This study compared the importance of professional values from the perspectives of nurses and nursing students. Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 250 nurses and 100 nursing students. Data were collected using the Nursing Professional Values Scale-Revised. Results: According to the findings, the mean scores of nurses (3.68 ± 0.16) and nursing students' (3.86 ± 0.17) perspective toward professional values were at an important level. Furthermore, the students' perspective toward the professional values' importance was significantly more favorable than those of nurses. The highest mean scores of professional values in the two groups were related to the caring and justice domains. Both groups considered activism and professionalism as the least important domains among the others. Conclusions: As the findings suggest, we need to pay more attention to values training, especially professionalism and activism, during undergraduate education for preparing the nurses to work in today's complex healthcare context. It is necessary to conduct more comprehensive studies for exploring the gap between theory and practice in different cultures and contexts.