A comparison of the views of nursing students and clinical educators on students’ ethical sensitivity

Health professionals frequently confront serious situations in which an ethical judgment is required clinical practice. Based thinking of nurses to respect the life, times, and human rights. This means that nurses have the moral and legal rights of patients to recognize and protect these rights are responsible. Despite the importance of moral sensitivity in nursing students, the purpose of this study was to assess the ethical sensitivity of nursing students and compare their views and their teachers about the ethical sensitivity of students. In this study using convince sampling 42 nursing students and 12 nursing clinical instructors from Golestan University of Medical Sciences, participated. The data collected reliable and valid moral sensitivity questionnaire. The mean age of students and teachers were 22.59 and 42.66 respectively. The mean of moral sensitivity score by self evaluation was 56.64±9.2 and by teacher assessment was 51.17±13.2. The students self-evaluation scores for some questions such as patient’s rights, ethical dealing with difficult circumstances, and using previous experiences, were better than the teacher’s assessment, however the statistics showed no significant relationship between the scores of moral sensitivity of these two groups. The results showed the students' perceptions of their ethical sensitivity compared to teachers about their views were not significantly different. This could indicate a true understanding of nursing instructors from moral sensitivity of their students.