Relationship of Life Respect Consciousness, Empathy, Resilience and Biomedical Ethics Awareness in Nursing Students

Abstract

Objectives It is important for nursing students to properly establish the biomedical ethics awareness in order to become a competent nurse in the future. The purpose of this study was to investigate the levels of life respect consciousness, empathy, resilience and biomedical ethics awareness of nursing students, and to examine the relationships of variables. Methods The participants were 187 nursing students. Data were collected from May 28 to June 8, 2018 by using a self reported questionnaire and analyzed by using t-test, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression analyses. Results The mean score of life respect consciousness was 3.98 ± 0.44, that of empathy was 3.48 ± 0.33, that of resilience was 3.48 ± 0.41, and that of biomedical ethics awareness was 2.85 ± 0.23. There were significant differences in biomedical ethics awareness by clinical practice experience and grade of nursing students. There was a positive correlation between biomedical ethics awareness and life respect consciousness (r = 0.30, p < 0.001), a positive correlation between biomedical ethics awareness and empathy (r = 0.29, p < 0.001) and a positive correlation between biomedical ethics awareness and resilience (r = 0.30, p < 0.001). Variables such as life respect consciousness, empathy, resilience, and clinical practice experience explained 18.0% (F = 10.88, p < 0.001) of variance of biomedical ethics awareness for nursing students. Conclusions According to these results, there is a need to develop educational programs to increase the life respect consciousness, empathy and resilience for improving the level of biomedical ethics awareness in nursing students and it is important to apply the developed program considering clinical practice experience to the curriculum. Key words: Biomedical ethics, Empathy, Life respect, Nursing student, Resilience