Prioritizing of nursing ethics values using Analytic Hierarchy Process approach

Introduction: Nursing care is an essential component of health services and ethics in nursing is very important in health care. The inherent responsibility in nurses is respect to moral values and human rights. The purpose of this research was prioritizing of nursing ethics values using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and determining rate of observance them in a teaching hospital related to Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Method: This descriptive-comparative study was done in the first semester of 1391 in a hospital related to Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The questionnaire was designed using AHP and completed by nursing ethics experts. Another questionnaire was designed that consisted of demographic information and 37 questions about the values and principles of nursing ethics that were completed by 100 patients and 100 nurses. The data was collected by a validated and reliable questionnaire and were analyzed by the «SPSS 16». Results: The results indicated that responsibility, respect to the privacy of patients and respect to Client/ Patient were assigned priority in the first to third. Also there was statistically significant difference between nurses' and patients' viewpoints about respecting nursing ethics values (p=0.001). Conclusion: Nurses' viewpoints about respecting nursing Ethics were higher than patients'. It is suggested that managers of nursing evaluate the nurse's performance in observing nursing Ethics and should provide educational programs in the field to improve quality of nursing Care.