Nurses' Ethical Sensitivity: Research on Central Public Hospitals in Sivas Province

Abstract

While health is an indispensable subject that is of vital importance to every human, getting fair and easily accessible health care is a basic human right. Nurses are one of the pillars of health care as they are in constant one-on-one communication with patients. Nursing is a job oriented towards planning, implementing, and developing patient care. Nurses are confronted with many ethical problems while this care is being provided. Each nurse's view and solution to an event may be different in the face of ethical problems. An important factor causing this condition is a nurse's level of ethical sensitivity. This level must be high in order to recognize ethical problems and make correct decisions. Therefore, an examination of nurses ethical sensitivity and identification of the different variables affecting this are extremely important. In this context, the current study which aims to determine nurses level of ethical sensitivity is crucial for drawing attention to this subject. The population of the research, which was planned as a cross-sectional descriptive study, was comprised of 650 nurses on duty at Sivas State Hospital and Sivas Specimen Hospital, a public hospital. The study was conducted with 300 nurses who agreed to participate in the research scheduled to occur between the 3rd and 30th of June, 2013. Before starting the study, a preliminary implementation was performed with 10 nurses. As a result of the implementation, no changes were made to the data collection form and the data that was obtained was included with the rest of the survey. The data collection form was distributed to the nurses by the researchers. Ten days were given to fill it out, and at the end of this period it was collected by the researchers. The survey form consisted of questions from Lutzen's ethical sensitivity scale, with 10 questions on socio-demographics and the work life of nurses. The ethical sensitivity of the nurses who participated in the study was found to be at an intermediate level via the question form which was comprised of six dimensions.