Operating room nurses’ perception of professional values

Background and significance of research: Nurses’ awareness of professional values and how those values affect their behaviors is an integral part of nursing care. There is a large body of research on nursing professional values, however, a careful survey of the available literature did not yield any studies investigating the status of professional values in operating rooms. Objective: This study aims to investigate the perception of operating room nurses of university hospitals toward professional values. Research plan: In this cross-sectional study, data were collected using Schank and Weis’s Nurses Professional Values Scale–Revised. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS version 16. Participants and settings: The 513 participants of the study consisted of operating room nurses and nurse anesthetists from six university hospitals. Ethical considerations: This study has been approved by the ethics committee of the university. Findings: The mean total professional values score of the operating room staff was found to be 100.84 ± 15.685, which indicates that the participants had a positive perception toward observance of nursing professional values in practice. The results showed that the participants considered the domains of justice and activism as, respectively, the most and the least important. The operating room staff’s overall professional values scores were not found to correlate significantly with their ages, professional experience, university majors, or attendance at ethics workshops. However, a significant difference was found between the professional values scores of the female and male staff. The professional values scores of the operating room nurses and the nurse anesthetists were not significantly different (p value = 0.494). Conclusion: Operating room staff’s awareness of professional values is essential to providing care to patients based on professional principles. Accordingly, there is need for programs to raise operating room nurses’ awareness of their professional duties and improve their professional performance.