Determining The Relationship Between Nurses Personal Values and Their Ethical Sensitivity

Aim: The study was performed as descriptive, comperative and correlational to evaluate the personal values and ethical sensi- tivity level of the nurses and to examine the relation in-between.

Method: The study was performed as descriptive, comperative and correlational. Written permissions are obtained from Kocaeli University, Faculty of Medicine ethic committee and the insitutions that will carry out this research. The universe of the research consists of 230 nurses working at two private hospitals and two public hospitals in Yalova City; the sample of the research consists of 170 nurses who accept to work for this research. The data of the research were collected by using “Structured Questionnaire”, “Hierarchy of Values Scale” and “Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire-MSQ” and analysed with frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation, crosstabs, Mann Whitney U and Kruskall Wallistest by using SPSS-15 package programme on computer.

Results: Among the value choices of the nurses, political and moral values ranked first and second with similar percentage among the nurses in the sample (%28,2). Nurses’ ADA total (X±SS 76,33±22,84) and its sub-dimensions (autonomy is 17,74±4,61; benevolence is 11,90±4,32; holistic approach is 12,61±4,17; experiencing conflict is 6,74±2,65; practice is 9,59±2,99; orientation is 9,87±3,90) are found to have high ethical sensitivity levels according to mean marks. It is seen that nurses ethical sensitivity levels diff er according to their basic personal value preferences. The findings show that nurses who adopt social values as their basic value have high ethical levels and nurses who adopt economic values as their basic value have the lowest ethical sensitivity level.

Conclusion: In conclusion, it is detected that nurses adopted primarily political and moral values. It is determined that ethical sensitivity levels vary according to nurses basic personal value preferences.