The Relationship Between Clinical Competence and Moral Courage of Nurses in Intensive Care Units of Hospitals Affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences: A Multicenter Cross-Sectional Study

Nursing is a care profession and nurses, due to their professional nature, need moral courage to provide safe and professional care to clients. On the other hand, one of the needs of nursing education is to improve the professional ethics skills of nurses in order to provide nursing care based on professional standards and ultimately to ensure proper clinical care. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the relationship between clinical competence and moral courage of nurses working in the intensive care units' hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences at 2020.

This multicenter Cross-sectional Study was conducted on 350 nurses working in the intensive care units' hospitals of Tehran hospitals who were selected by quota method. The data collection tools of the study included demographic questionnaire, clinical competency questionnaire of intensive care unit nurses and moral courage questionnaire of Sekerka et al.

The mean scores of total moral courage and clinical competence in intensive care unit nurses were 74.24±12.22 and 155.10±23.37, respectively. There is a strong and significant direct relationship between moral courage and clinical competence of nurses (r=0.81 and p=0.001). Clinical competence in nurses with more work experience, older, working in the morning and day shifts and with formal and contract employment status was significantly higher than other nurses (p<0.001). Also, moral courage in male nurses, married, with more work experience, older, working in the morning and day shifts and with formal and contract employment status was significantly higher than other nurses (p<0.001).

According to the results of the present study, moral courage increases with increasing the clinical competence of nurses. Therefore, it requires the attention of as many officials as possible in this regard.