Ethical and human rights issues in nursing practice: Involvement, educational preparation and perceived educational needs of nurses

Nurses during their course of day-to-day work, experience a variety of ethical and human rights issues. These issues are experienced by all nurses at all levels and in every area of practice.

To explore registered nurses' experiences of ethics and human rights issues in nursing practice.

Descriptive survey of 203 nurses using a self developed survey questionnaire.

Most concerning ethical issues reported by nurses (more than 80%) were poor staffing patterns that limit patient access to nursing care (89.66%); Providing care with a possible risk to your own health (e.g., TB, HIV, violence) (82.76%); Using/not using physical or chemical restraints (82.27%); Conflicts in nurse-physician (or other professional) relationships (81.28%). Majority (42.4%) of the nurses were involved in the issues "1–3 times a month”” and 16.7% nurses indicated that they were never involved in any of the issues. Only 14.8% of nurses in the study have attended CNE on ethics content. 67.5% of nurses graded themselves as having great need for ethical and human rights issues/dilemmas related education for their nursing practice. Regarding adequacy of resources provided at the work place in dealing with the issues, 27.1% of the nurses reported totally inadequate resources. 41.8% nurses reported that they are quite knowledgeable and 13.8% indicated no knowledge at all related to ethics in nursing. 55.2% reported that their work place has ethics committee and out of those only 4.5% reported that they have approached the ethics committee to deal with ethical dilemmas. 66% of study subjects reported that ethics content was integrated throughout the program of study while 13.8% reported that no content on ethics was taught to them during their academic preparation. 90% to 100% of study subjects indicated that educational content on ethics would be very helpful to them if taught in an in service education program.

The findings from this study indicate that significant number of RNs frequently experience ethical issues. Although the findings of the study cannot be generalized but they highlight the critical examination of the content on ethics and human rights of both undergraduate and postgraduate nursing curricula as well as education/professional development programs, whether they address the issues that are of most concern and are of most relevance to nursing or not?