Original Research Paper_Awareness of Nursing Students on Legal and Ethical Issues in day-to-day Practice at a Teaching Hospital in Shillong, Northeast India

Abstract

Background: In the current corona crisis, nurses are likely to face increasing legal and ethical challenges in the path of their industrious career. We have conducted this research to explore the awareness of nursing students on these issues which, we feel, is essential to enable them to deal with practical situations in future Methods: A total of 162 participants were included in the study. Data was collected with the help of a structured self-administered online questionnaire comprising socio-demographic variables and fifteen items related to the research topic. Analysis was done using SPSS version 11 by descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: Most of the participants (60.5%) demonstrated fair awareness according to the criteria in the research tool. Around 55.5% were aware of the code of ethics for nurses in India and a majority (92.6%) knew about the concept of patient autonomy in nursing ethics. However, there was no association between level of awareness with age, gender, and duration of clinical exposure. Conclusion: These findings emphasize the importance of incorporating ethics and law in the curriculum and reinforcement by problem-based learning to better equip students for real life clinical scenarios in a post-pandemic world.