Ethics Mechanism of Nursing Divisions in Community Hospitals, Southern Thailand
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Abstract
The objectives of this qualitative descriptive research were to explore ethics mechanism and factors supporting ethics mechanism of nursing divisions in community hospitals, Southern Thailand. The participants
consisted of 30 chief nurses and nurse administrators from 30 community hospitals who were assigned by chief nurses. They were selected by snowball sampling technique. The questionnaire was the Interview Guideline on Ethics Mechanism and Supporting Factors. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and content analysis.
The results revealed that (1) ethics mechanism in nursing management which was related to personnel management revealed that all nursing divisions enhanced knowledge, awareness, and skills on ethics for both administrators and personnel. For budget and resource management, it was found that all nursing divisions allocated budget for producing handbooks, manuals, books and documents related to ethics for their personnel. For method of management, it was found that all nursing divisions had policy related to personnel ethical development to conform with the profession and quality control organization, (2) ethics mechanism in nursing service, it was found that all divisions provided channels for customers’ complaints
regarding nurses’ behaviors, and (3) ethics mechanism in academic work/research, it was found that only 5 divisions had an ethics mechanism in academic work/research by supporting nurses to present on ethics in nursing conference both internal and external to their workplace, and producing ethics media and integrated
ethics in producing academic papers. For supporting factors of ethics mechanism, the results showed that the majority of participants perceived that ethics policy of their hospital was the most important supporting factor.
The results of this study will increase awareness of nurse administrators in community hospitals regarding the importance of ethics mechanism development in promoting ethical behaviors of their nurses.