Evaluating staff and student's knowledge about professional ethics in the Field of Communication, Law and Ethics

One aspect of medical ethics is professional ethics observance in the provision of care. Professional ethics is a set of principles and standards of human behavior that determines the behavior of individuals and groups and it is very important to know and understand its areas. The aim of this study was to determine staffs and students’ knowledge about the principles of professional ethics in communication, rules and ethics fields.
This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study.330 nurses, midwives and nurses of the operating room and 76 nursing students74 midwifery students and 39 operating room students that were selected by stratified random sampling method participated in this study in 2016. Data collection tool was a questionnaire in two parts, the first part contained demographic characteristics and the second part include familiarity with the professional ethics, rules , regulation and communication .Validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by content validity and by using Cronbach’s alpha, index reliability questions was determined in the students, nursing and midwifery staff (0.82) and in the students and operating room staff was (0.77) as well. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and chi-square test through SPSS.
The results of this study showed that in the staffs, nursing and midwifery students, knowledge level in 3 areas of communication , legal and the ethical-professional was at the moderate level, and in the staffs and operating room students level of knowledge in these three areas were estimated at a good level. According to chi square test, among the variables studied in the nursing and midwifery and operating room group, there was a significant differences between the ethical domain and the employment status (P=0.001), the legal domain with work experience (P=0.003) and the domain of communication with the service sector (P=0.003) respectively. In the nursing and midwifery student's room, there was a significant relationship between the ethical domain and the academic term (P=0.02).
generally, the knowledge of the operating room staff and the students was good and in the staff, nursing and midwives students the level of awareness of professional ethics was moderate so in-service retraining courses about professional ethics is recommended.