Ethical problems in nursing management: Frequency and difficulty of the problems

Background Nurse managers (NMs) lead the biggest personnel group in health care—nurses. They have various responsibilities in clarifying an organization’s values to their staff and overseeing and supporting continuous upholding of ethical standards and nurses’ ethical competence. Purpose The purpose of the study was to investigate the frequency and difficulty of the ethical problems NMs encounter in their work and to determine the background factors correlating with the problems. Methodology Cross-sectional survey design was used. Ethical problems were approached by five categories related to patients, nursing staff, other professional groups, the organization, and the NMs themselves. The data collected with questionnaires from NMs in ward, middle, and strategic management (n = 214) in Finland from November 2014 to May 2015 were statistically analyzed. Results The most frequently encountered ethical problems were related to nursing staff and organization: About half of NMs encountered those problems at least weekly. The most difficult ethical problems were related to the organization—the mean value of the sum score being significantly higher compared to the four other sum scores (p
Source: Health Care Management Review - Category: American Health Tags: Features Source Type: research