Abstract

Background and objective: Nurses should have an appropriate level of ethical development to perform their daily care. Ethical codes should be understood by nurses and used in each dimension of nursing practice. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the implementation status of nurses' ethical codes. Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was carried out on 202 nurses working in internal and surgical wards using easy sampling in educational hospitals of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Abadan. The implementation status of ethical codes was investigated using a researcher-made questionnaire and the obtained data were analyzed using SPSS ver. 16. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the level of ethical performance of nurses with cases such as organizational positions, work shift, academic education, and ethics retraining courses and work experience (p< 0.005). This difference was not observed in relation to gender, marital status, educational degree, history of presenting complaints and job satisfaction and the workplace (p>0.005). Conclusion: Results of this study showed that nurses should firstly recognize the dimensions and ethical issues in their profession for the ethical performance of professional nursing; therefore, it is recommended to maximize the efficiency and quality of health care by educating the medical staff and raising their awareness of professional ethics.