The relationship between ethical climate and the intent to stay at work among operating room and anesthesia personnel: A Descriptive cross-sectional study

Introduction: In the therapeutic environment, the ethical climate is the conditions that facilitate ethical decision-making. Some researchers believe that promotion of the ethical climate in health care institutes brings about better reactions to ethical stress on the part of the nurses and other causes of dissatisfaction in the work environment. The study was conducted to examine the relationship between ethical climate and intent to stay at work among operating room and anesthesia personnel in Jahrom in 2018. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted as census on 50 operating room and anesthesia personnel of Jahrom hospitals in 2018. The inclusion criterion was having two years of clinical experience in the operating room with lack of consent to participate in the study as the exclusion criterion. Data collection tool had three parts: the first part was the demographic information, the second part was Olson's Hospital Ethical Climate Survey (HECS), and the third part was Work Intention Inventory (WII). Data analysis was done in SPSS 21 using Spearman correlation coefficient and Kruskal-Wallis test at a significance level of p<0.05. Results: The participants were 50 people, of whom 56% were anesthesia personnel and the rest were operating room personnel. The mean score of ethical climate and all its domains for the operating room personnel was higher than 3.5 and desirable. However, the mean score of ethical climate and all its domains for anesthesia personnel was lower than 3.5 and undesirable. Among all the personnel, only the physicians' climate mean score with a value of 3.45 was less than 3.5 and undesirable. The mean score of stay at work for operation room personnel was 13.63 and higher than the mean for anesthesia personnel with a mean score of 13.53. According to the results, there were no significant relationships between the intent to stay at work with the ethical climate of the operating room and none of its domains among operating room personnel (p>0.05). Conclusion: The study results reported no significant differences between the status of the ethical climate and intent to stay at work of the operating room and anesthesia personnel. Keywords: ethical climate, stay at work, operating room, anesthesiology