Assessing the ethical climate of Kerman teaching hospitals

Abstract

Background: The ethical climate (organizational culture) of an organization as perceived by a group of its workers is believed to affect ethical practices, job satisfaction and quality of care. Objectives: To assess the ethical climate of teaching hospitals of Kerman city according to nursing staffs' views. Methods: A 26-items questionnaire was translated to Persian which its content validity was acceptable according to the literature review. Its reliability was in an acceptable range according to Cronbach's alpha (0.92). It was distributed between a convenient sample of 350 nursing staff who worked in the four teaching hospitals of Kerman city. Three hundred and two subjects completed the inventory. All questionnaires were anonymous. Results: The majority of them (76%) were female. The mean (±SD) age of the individuals were 32.4 (± 8.5). Subscription to the expression always was mostly seen for the item my manager is someone I respect and it was seldom observed for the item nurses are supported and respected in this hospital. There was no significant difference in the total score of the inventory according to background variables (i.e. age, sex, educational level, employment status and hospitals). Conclusion: According to the great impact of organizational culture on nurses' practices it seems that some aspects of organizational culture of teaching hospital especially the aspects that are related to physicians and top level managers need to be improved.