Service and Education Share Responsibility for Nursesʼ Value Development

Abstract

This article examines professional values of senior baccalaureate nursing students and practicing nurses. An important finding was that practicing nurses rated behaviors reflecting values in the American Nurses Association (ANA) Code for Nurses as more important than did senior students, thereby supporting the notion that practice contributes to value formation. The ongoing development and internalization of the nursing professions' values requires active involvement by staff development educators. The phenomena of value formation and development of professional values appear to mirror the novice to expert model.

Professional values of Turkish nurses: A descriptive study

“…Overall, the literature suggests that the teaching of professional values to nurses theoretically starts in nursing schools but actually develops further over time with clinical practice. 20,21 Similarly, in some studies, although ethics education had a positive effect on professional values, it has been reported that students lack the basic knowledge regarding professional values and have different perspectives on the importance of professional values. 7,22 In this study, one of the reasons why young nurses with few working years received low scores may be related to not having sufficient experience.…”

“…[19][20][21][22] In Turkey, there are studies in the literature that focus on identifying students' professional values in general; however, due to the limited number of studies with nurses, conducting this study was deemed necessary. Its goals are to clarify two main sets of questions:…”

A Study of Nurses’ Perception of Professional Values in the University Hospitals Affiliated with Jahrom University of Medical Sciences, 2015

“…Nurses are expected to provide their patients with respectful, efficient and unbiased care 2 . Studies show that nurses and nursing students attach great importance to such concepts as respect, privacy, confidentiality, support and quality care, all of which are related to the dimension of caring 7,10 . In Taiwan, Lin et al studied the change in nursing students' perception of professional values between the times when they begin their studies and when they graduate with a bachelor's degree.…”

“…At the core of professional values is: honesty and integrity, humanity, respect, sense of responsibility, compassion and sympathy, altruism, self-confidence, and self-improvement Professional culture and education are among the factors that affect nursing values 4 . Attention to the global nursing culture is essential to the improvement of nurses' professional performance 9 .The impartment of professional nursing values is a gradual and longlasting process which begins with the professional education of nurses and extends throughout all the years of a nurse's practice 10 . Studies show that the majority of nurses find it challenging to act based on professional values and moral ideals in clinical environments 11 .…”

“…The results of the study of Schank et al show that education is essential to the development of professional values in nurses. However, most official education programs for nurses fail to pay attention to essential nursing values and, in general, these values are learned through casual discussions 10 . In their study of the attitude of nursing studentsin type I medical schools in Iran toward professional values, Hosseini et al (2012) report that, even though the mean of the students' total scores lie in the relatively important or important ranges of the Likert scale, the majority of the students who were about to graduate are not aware of the importance of certain of the value-related aspects of their nonclinical duties.…”