Fairness and respect in nurse educators' work- nursing students' perceptions.

Abstract

This study describes how the ethical principles of fairness and respect come true in the work of nurse educators from the perspective of nursing students. Nurse educators' competence of professional ethics is important in providing an ethical role model to nursing students and to professionals in the field of health care. The descriptive cross-sectional study design was used. The data were collected from graduating nursing students (n=202) in Finland with an internet-based questionnaire consisting of 22 structured questions with 5-point Likert scale. The data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that educators' fairness and respect towards others (colleagues, superiors, mentors, nursing leaders) was good but towards students their fairness did not achieve as good a level. Also, according to the students' assessment, the educators did not respect the students' individual opinions in all cases. Educators' fairness and respect towards their colleagues was satisfactory. The appreciation of educators in the society was reasonably good, but in the opinion of the students the views of educators were not respected very much. As a conclusion, can be said that educators need to put more emphasis on their action.