Factors Related to Moral Courage of Nursing Students in Zanjan

Background: Moral courage is an important criterion in nursing for moral care. Enormous moral challenges facing students of nursing in their clinical environment require being morally courageous. Objectives: The aim of this study is to explore factors concerning nursing students’ moral courage. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Zanjan 2018, focusing on 208 nursing students who were selected based on convenience sampling method and time series Poisson distribution. The criteria for the sampling was the students undergoing practical training for at least three semesters and were willing to take part in this study. To collect the data, the Professional Moral Courage Scale by Sekerka et al. (2009) was used. The questionnaire evaluates moral courage on five dimensions, including moral agency, multiple values, endurance of threats, going beyond compliance, and moral goals. The range of scores was 15-105. The data were analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. Results: Nursing students’ mean score of moral courage was 85±12.66, which showed a favorable level. The highest mean score was related to `Moral agency’ (85±12.66) followed by `Going beyond compliance’ (17.48±3.05) and the least mean score was related to `Moral goals’ (16.09±3.39). The findings of this study showed that `Moral courage’ was significantly higher among those with high average and among the natives (p=0.05). Conclusion: Since the mean score of moral courage increased in proportion to average and nativity, the educational officials and advisors are recommended to pay attention to keeping moral courage in a favorable level and try to raise students’ educational ability, trying to admit nursing students in their own cities