ABSTRACT

Background: Nursing students constantly attend at educational hospitals and encounter ethical issues; so they should be familiar with codes of ethics and the essentials of ethical decision-making.

Aim: To explore teaching nursing codes of ethics based on lecture and measure moral sensitivity and moral performance of nursing students.

Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental research conducted with the participation of all nursing students in semesters 6 and 8 (n=83) through census sampling and were assigned to the control group (semester 6) and lecture group (semester 8). Using moral sensitivity and the nurses' moral performance questionnaires a pre-test was performed of two groups before the Intervention. Ethics education was done in lecture group for three two-hour training sessions. The control group only received the training program of the faculty. After the intervention, the questionnaires were completed again by the two groups. Data were analyzed by SPSS 16 statistical software, t-test, Chi-square test and repeated measure ANOVA.

Results: According to the results, no statistically significant difference was found between two groups regarding the pretest mean score of moral sensitivity and moral performance(P>0.05), But after the intervention, the mean score of moral sensitivity and moral performance in the lecture group were significantly increased compared to the control group(P> 0.001).

Conclusions: Considering the positive effects of teaching Iranian nursing codes of ethics to improve the moral sensitivity and moral performance of nursing students, it is suggested that managers and nursing educators pay more attention to the observance of nursing codes of ethics and design a student-centered ethical codes to prepare them to face for ethical issues.

Keywords: codes of ethics, education, moral sensitivity, nursing, lecture