Professional values and ethical sensitivities of nurses in COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background: Nurses are facing several ethical problems like the safety of the nurses, patients, co-workers, and families, allocation of scarce resources, and the changing nature of the relationships of nurses with patients and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. These have caused nurses to have feelings such as stigmatization, fear, anger, anxiety, uncertainty, work-related strain, and burnout. Identifying nurses' ethical sensitivities and professional values are highly important to ensure that nurses are placed in the right decision-making position. This descriptive correlational study was carried out to evaluate the professional values and ethical sensitivities of nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A quantitative descriptive and correlational study was performed with 245 nurses in Turkey. The “personal information form,” the “nurses professional values scale-revised (NPVS-R),” and the “moral sensitivity questionnaire (MSQ)” were employed for data collection. Results: The nurses' 52.7% reported facing an ethical dilemma. Also, 40.3% of the nurses who had an ethical dilemma during the pandemic failed to solve it. The mean NPVS-R scores of the nurses had statistically significant negative correlations with mean scores of the overall MSQ and its autonomy, benefit, integrative approach, and orientation subscales (p