Assessment of Educational Needs in Ethics and its Relationship with Ethical Efficiency among Health Care Providers of Sistan and Bloochestan Province

The necessity of governing ethics is desirable in the work environments and is universally accepted. Ethical performance is based on the ethical criteria that employees are expected to adhere to. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between ethical educational needs and ethical efficiency in health workers of Sistan province. This is a descriptive correlational study. Data of 377 healthcare providers of Sistan rural areas were collected through a multi-stage cluster sampling method.  Information was collected with a valid and reliable questionnaire. The data were analyzed by SPSS 19 software using descriptive correlation, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficient. The results showed mean score of the need for ethical education of health care providers was relatively high (with respect to the maximum of the score), and the ethical performance of health care workers was low. There was also a significant and inverse relationship between score of ethical educational needs and ethical performance of health care providers (P >0.05). Based on the results, there was a significant and inverse relationship between ethical educational needs and ethical performance of health care providers. Providers who had a higher level of information and less educational needs had higher ethical performance. So, implementation of educational programs based on ethical educational needs is recommended for increasing ethical performance of health care providers as they are first-line practitioners who interact with people and health care clients.