Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Professional nurse should be familiar with the principles of biomedical ethics and how to deal with situations of moral conflict. Nurses encounter a variety of ethical conflicts in their work environments, which, if not properly educated for that, may be destructive. One of the first steps to recognize and help resolve moral conflicts seems to be a better understanding of the underlying causes of these conflicts. For this purpose, this study compared the exposure of pre-hospital emergency staff and nurses of the ophthalmologic departments in Isfahan with ethical conflicts in their careers. This descriptive-analytic study was performed on 44 pre-hospital emergency personnel and 42 nurses in ophthalmic and postgraduate degrees. Data were collected using Falco's moral conflict questionnaire. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution tables, dispersion indexes, and mean and analytical statistics such as T test and ANOVA. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 8. The results of this study showed that the prevalence of ethical conflicts among pre-hospital emergency personnel with a mean of 61.65 was higher than nurses in ophthalmic departments with an average of 40.23. Therefore, according to the results of this study, the degree of exposure to ethical conflict situations for pre-hospital emergency personnel more common in comparison with the staff of the elective hospital units in more stressful situations. The degree of exposure to ethical conflict situations is also more significant for pre-hospital emergency personnel than nurses in the ophthalmic departments.

Communication with patients is an important issue in nursing meaning that to realize the truth from their viewpoints. This study was performed to compare levels of nurses’ empathy with patients at drug abuse treatment centers (DATCs) and the internal ward of hospital. The present research was a cross-sectional and descriptive-analytic study conducted at two environments of the internal ward and DATCs. A total of 60 subjects comprised research participants and were listed in the study through census method. A two-part scale was used including personal information and Jefferson scale of empathy with verified validity and reliability. Data were analyzed using SPSS16 software. The scores of nurses' empathy with patients recorded in the internal ward and at DATCs were 67.84±6.32 and 79.73±9.21 (out of 100), respectively (P=0.001). Male nurses (76.80±9.88), married nurses (75.93±9.98), ages of >40 years (79.1±11.12), masters’ degrees (75.5±3.78), job experiences of >10 years (83.53±8.53) and overtime hours of <50 h (80.61±9.9) attained the highest empathy scores with significant differences (P<0.05). The scores of nurses’ empathy with drug-dependent patients at DATCs were higher than those of internal wards indicating that the care of addicted patients in a specialized ward leads to increased empathy. Considering the relationship between empathic communication, educational levels and occupational experience of nurses, it is essential to consider training empathy skills to nursing students from the first semester and to provide in-service training to nurses working at hospitals and centers by nurses of higher educational qualifications and experiences.