Nursing and midwifery students’ attitudes towards principles of medical ethics in Kermanshah, Iran

BACKGROUND: Professional ethics is one of the important topics, which includes various rights such as respecting the patient’s right to choose (autonomy), being useful (beneficence), being harmless (non- maleficence), and respecting the justice, integrity, and confidentiality of information. Adherence to these principles can increase the quality of care and patient satisfaction. Since determining the current attitude of students towards ethics plays an important role in educational programs, this study was conducted to evaluate the attitude of nursing and midwifery students of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences towards six principles of professional ethics. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 76 undergraduate nursing and midwifery students (who were at the final years of their study) were selected to participate in this study by census method. The data collection tool was a valid and reliable questionnaire on the principles of medical ethics. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. RESULTS: The study sample consisted of 49 (64.5%) nursing and 27 (35.5%) midwifery students with an average age of 23 ± 1.4 years. The mean score of nursing and midwifery students’ attitude towards medical ethics was 95.01 ± 4.8 in basis of 100, and was 94.56 ± 4.9 for nursing students and 96.04 ± 4.7 for midwifery students. Majority of the samples (96.26%) had positive attitude towards medical ethics and 3.73% had a relatively positive attitude. No statistically significant relationship was found between the attitude of students and variables of gender (t = − 0.27, p = 0.78), field of study (t = − 1.3, p = 0.99), marital status (t = − 1.378, p = 0.178), and age (F = 1.606, p = 0.2). CONCLUSION: All students in this study had a positive attitude towards the principles of medical ethics, and this is a valuable asset for clinical environments. To increase the generalizability of the study, further studies with bigger sample size on the students of various disciplines of medical sciences is recommended.