"Evaluation of the moral courage of nurses working in the departments of medical education centers for Azari male children in Tabriz and its relationship with their caring behavior

Abstract

Abstract Background and purpose: Today, professional ethics is an important part of professions, and this issue becomes more important in this profession due to the ethical nature of the nursing profession. Moral courage is an inherent human characteristic that manifests itself in dealing with difficult moral situations and leads to action based on moral principles despite obstacles. Nursing in the pediatric department always faces challenges and having moral courage in facing the problems and moral challenges in caring for children is inevitable. Considering the existing knowledge gap in the field of understanding moral courage and its relationship with caring behaviors of nurses working in children's wards, this study was conducted with the aim of determining the correlation between moral courage and caring behaviors of nurses working in children's wards. Findings: The findings of the research indicate that the majority of the research samples were married female nurses who were mostly aged 25-35 and had 5-10 years of work experience. The highest average score of caring behavior was related to professional behaviors (3.56) and the lowest average was related to inappropriate behaviors (2.17). Regarding moral courage, the highest average score was related to the moral factor (3.43) and the lowest was related to moral goals (2.70). All areas of moral courage had a positive and significant relationship with the dimensions of physical and technical behaviors of caring behavior. In all domains of moral courage, no significant relationship was found with inappropriate behaviors dimension of caring behavior. In terms of the care behavior score, there is no statistically significant difference between variables related to gender, marital status, and employment status. In terms of the care behavior score, there is a statistically significant difference between the variables of age, work experience and department. There is a statistically significant difference in the score of caring behavior among the age of nurses, and the score of caring behavior of nurses in the age group of 45-55 has a statistically significant difference with the age group of 25-35 (P=0.02). There is a statistically significant difference in the score of caring behavior among nurses with work experience. The score of caring behavior of nurses with 15-20 years of work experience has a statistically significant difference with nurses with 1-5 years of work experience (P=0.019). There is a statistically significant difference between the departments of the nurses' workplace, and the scores of the nurses working in the lung and blood departments have a statistically significant difference with the infectious department. (P=0.003). In terms of the moral courage score, there is no statistically significant difference between the variables related to sex, age, work sector, and employment status. However, there is a significant relationship between the variables of marital status and work experience with the moral courage score. There is a statistically significant difference between nurses with 15-20 years of work experience and nurses with 1-5 years of work experience in terms of moral courage (P=0.028). Conclusion: The result of this study shows that the moral courage and caring behaviors of the nurses working in the children's hospital participating in the study are high. Also, there is a positive and significant relationship between moral courage and caring behaviors.