Components of clinical professional ethics in nursing care of the elderly: A narrative review study

Respecting for ethics principles in nursing care of elderly is important; but the degree of compliance varies in clinical settings. This narrative review study aimed to review components of clinical professional ethics in nursing care of elderly. The search was conducted in a purpose-based method based on appropriate syntax from valid and available international databases and sources including Scopus, Web of Science, Pubmed, ProQuest and Persian databases or local sources including Irandoc, idml.research, Magiran, SID   between 2000 and 2020. The key words covered Professional Ethics, Clinical Professional Ethics, Medical Ethics, Clinical Ethics, Professional Ethics and Elderly Care, Clinical Aging Care, Aging Nursing Care. After searching databases and information sources, 269 articles were found. Of these, 33 articles were selected as most relevant to our objectives and were examined. By extracting the results of the studies, two main categories and 9 subcategories were extracted, which include attitude (demographic factors, social factors, physiological factors of the patient, legal factors and moral attention) and performance (privacy, integrity, autonomy and education). The results showed a moderate to positive attitude towards professional ethics in providing nursing care for the elderly and also most of the nurses studied had moderate moral performance. Providing nursing services with respect and attention to the elderly is achieved if the providers of these services have a proper attitude and ethical performance to their clients. Therefore, clear ethical guidelines, continuing education to improve ethical knowledge and behaviors, and a nursing support system or program must be established.