Professional values and ethical ideology: Perceptions of nursing students

Abstract

Background: Moral philosophical positions and professional values have been shown to influence nurses’ practice behaviours. Understanding nursing students’ professional values and ethical ideologies, therefore, is important as they may help inform evidence-informed curriculum decisions and education strategies to develop students’ professional reflective competencies. However, there is a dearth in current empirical data on Canadian nursing students’ perceptions of professional values and ethical positions. Objectives: This study’s purpose was to examine undergraduate nursing student’s perceptions of professional values and ethical ideology and explore relationships in data and selected participant demographic variables. Research design, participants and context: A descriptive cross-sectional research design was conducted with a convenience sample of undergraduate nursing students recruited from a university in Canada. An online encrypted survey consisting of two validated instruments was administered to participants who met study eligibility criteria. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse the data and classify nursing students’ ethical ideologies into four categories based on mean scores for idealism and relativism. Ethical considerations: This study received ethical approval from the institutional Behavioural Research Ethics Board and was executed in-line with ethical principles for research involving humans. Findings: Nursing students scored high on professional values and ethical idealism and differed significantly on a measure of ethical relativism in terms of age and year of study. Professional values were significantly associated with ethical idealism. Based on mean scores for idealism and relativism, most nursing students in the study were classified as situationists. Discussion and conclusion: Findings suggest that faculty pay attention to influences of moral philosophical positions in facilitating nursing students’ professional values development. Implications for future research and curriculum are highlighted to strengthen nursing students’ professional values.

Moral Resilience in Nursing Education: Exploring Undergraduate Nursing Students Perceptions of Resilience in Relation to Ethical Ideology

“…In nursing students, ethical ideology is associated with professional values (Arries, 2019) self-identified culture, and intrinsic religiosity (White et al, 2019). In their study, White et al (2019) found that students whose parents were not born in the United States scored higher on ethical idealism.…”

“…In nursing students, ethical ideology is associated with professional values (Arries, 2019) self-identified culture, and intrinsic religiosity (White et al., 2019). In their study, White et al.…”

Ethical Climate, Ethical Behavior and Professional Values as Perceived by Staff Nurses' at Two Differenthospitals

“…Tehranineshat, Torabizadeh & Bijani (2020) concluded that increasing knowledge regard nurses' professional values and ethical climate at work environment can assist nursing managers to determine suitable strategies to increase satisfaction and decrease burnout and work stress. Arries (2020) emphasized that professional values affect nurses' behaviors. Therefore, it may provide evidenced information for curriculum improvement and effective educational strategies to expand students' clinical and professional competencies.…”

Relationship between perceived organizational support and professional values of nurses: mediating effect of emotional labor

“…Professional values are the framework and standard for the conduct of professionals. Any professional group has its professional values [ 1 ]. As the largest medical care group, nurses’ professional values are particularly critical, which form the basis of nursing practice and the standard for nurses to interact with patients and colleagues [ 2 , 3 ].…”