An examination of factors associated with ethical behavior of nurses

Abstract

With the aim of clarifying the relationship between nurses’ ethical behavior and individual and organizational characteristics, a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire survey was conducted among 2,000 nurses working at a hospital with at least 200 general hospital beds in the Tokai region, and 331 valid responses were obtained. The survey included seven personal characteristics, seven organizational characteristics, and ethical behaviors using the revised ethical behavior scale for nurses. For the analysis, basic statistics were calculated, and differences in ethical behavior scores by individual and organizational characteristics were tested and multiple comparisons were made for those that showed significant differences. As a result, in the comparison of attributes, significant differences were found in the overall scale scores for “presence of children,” “job position,” “ward department,” and “number of overtime hours worked.” In particular, “number of overtime hours” showed significant differences in the overall scale scores and in all subfactors, indicating that the increased physical and mental burden on nurses has a significant impact on their ethical behavior as well.