How is Nurses' Awareness of Ethical and Legal Issues Related to ‎Caring for Older Adults?‌

Nursing is an ethical profession and nurses are responsible for patient care. Caring for older adults requires special attention to ethical and legal issues. Nurseschr('39') unawareness in this regard would reduce patient autonomy, the quality of nursing care and finally world reduce nursing professional credentials. The aim of this study was assessing nurseschr('39') awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults.

This study was cross-sectional descriptive‎. Participants were 200 nurses that worked in Hospitals in Kashan (2014-2015).Data was collected by the researcher-made questionnaire  including three part, personal information, questions about ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults and a question about factors related to nurseschr('39') ethical mistakes. Statistical analysis was conducted using descriptive and inferential statistics via SPSS 11.5 software.

The level of nurseschr('39') awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults was undesirable. Kruskal- Wallis test showed a significant relationship between the score of nurseschr('39') awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults and their academic degree (P=0.001). Mann- Whitney U test also showed a significant relationship between the score and previous training about aging (P=0.001) but there was no significant relationship between the score of nurseschr('39') awareness and their gender, marital status, work experience, working unit and employment status.

The level of nurseschr('39') awareness of ethical and legal issues related to caring for older adults was not satisfactory. This condition should bring attention to the retraining programs and strengthening the supervisory system.