The healthcare environment is always fraught with moral issues and challenges for all members of the healthcare team, including nurses as the largest group of service providers in the healthcare system (Rasoal et al., 2017). Due to their continuous attendance to the patients at their bedside, nurses have a major effect on the quality of and patients' satisfaction with healthcare services (Rohde & Domm, 2018;Zamanzadeh et al., 2017). Adherence to ethical principles contributes to the provision of high-quality nursing care (Rahnavard et al., 2021).Commitment to ethics in healthcare constitutes the core of nursing values (Eskandari et al., 2016), and the World Health Organization (WHO, n.d.) has emphasized the significance of professional behaviour in accordance with healthcare values and ethics (Organization).Although ethics has long been closely associated with the nursing profession, it has classically received attention since the foundation of the International Council of Nurses (ICN) in 1899, such that the first ethical codes for nurses were compiled and published by ICN in 1953(Stievano & Tschudin, 2019. The American Nurses Association (ANA) considers ethical codes as part of the principles of nursing profession and mandates ethical commitment in any relationship, even with nursing students (Fowler, 2017;McCrink, 2010).
Ethical decision-making and professional behavior are essential skills in nursing profession, hence educational programs should be designed to enable future nurses to tackle problems related to ethical decision-making.
This descriptive, correlational and analytical study aimed at determining the ability of Iranian nursing students to make ethical decisions as well as relationship between such decisions and professional behavior.
The present study used census to select 140 freshmen from the School of Nursing and Midwifery of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran. Data collection tools included a demographic questionnaire, the Nursing Dilemma Test (NDT) comprising two indices of “nurse’s principled thinking” and “practical consideration”, as well as the Nursing Students Professional Behaviors Scale (NSPBS).
The mean scores obtained were 41.3±5.7 for “nurse’s principled thinking”, 21.3±3.7 for “practical consideration”, and 119.07±11.79 for professional behavior. Relationships of professional behavior with “nurse’s principled thinking” and “practical consideration” were insignificant (P>0.05).
According to the present study’s findings, nursing students’ weakness in applying ethical concepts to decisions and professional behaviors was due to a gap between scientific material learned and clinical practice. Hence, novel training strategies and programs should be designed to reduce such theory-practice gap.
Introduction:The first case of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Iran was officially announced on February 19, 2020, in Qom city. The prevalence of COVID-19 is higher among frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) due to their occupational exposure.Objective:The aim of this evidence implementation project was to improve the protection of nurses against COVID-19 in the emergency department of a teaching hospital in Tabriz, Iran.Methods:A clinical audit was undertaken using the JBI Practical Application of Clinical Evidence System (JBI PACES) tool. Ten audit criteria, representing the best practice recommendations for the protection of HCWs in the emergency department were used. A baseline audit was conducted, followed by the implementation of multiple strategies. The project was finalized with a follow-up audit to evaluate changes in practice.Results:The baseline audit results showed that the compliances for four (out of ten) audit criteria (criteria 4, 7, 8 and 9), were under 75%, which indicated poor and moderate compliance with the current evidence. After implementing plans such as running educational programs and meetings, major improvement was observed in 3 criteria, criterion 4 was improved from low to excellent (41–81%), criterion 7 was promoted from low to moderate (30–62%), criterion 8 was not promoted considerably (22–27%) and criterion 9 was improved from moderate to excellent (70–84%).Conclusion:The results of the audit process increased COVID-19 protection measures for nurses in the emergency department. It can be concluded that educational programs and tools, such as face-to-face training, educational pamphlets, workshops and meetings can facilitate the implementation of evidence into practice.
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