Abstract
The present study was conducted to assess the actual state of clinical nurses' ethics education, the moral sensitivity and related factors of clinical nurses with the goal of making ethics education proposals for improving nurses' ability to take ethical action. Questionnaires were distributed to 1746 clinical nurses and 722 responses to the questionnaire, excluding incomplete responses, were analyzed. 67.6% of nurses had experienced ethics education during basic training at nursing school, and 39.8% had participated in professional training in ethics since graduating. Regardless of whether or not they had opportunities for ethics education, 91.1% of nurses responded that they had little or no knowledge in relation to ethics. Further, little evidence was found of difference in response to items investigating the relationship of characteristics of the hospital or nurses and moral sensitivity, and it was found that existing ethics education does not affect moral sensitivity. Based on these findings, issues in evaluating ethics education for nurses and their competency in matters involving ethical judgment and behavior are discussed.
