title: Ethical difficulties in nursing, educational needs and attitudes about using ethics resources.
abstract: Ethical difficulties arise in healthcare practices. However, despite extensive research findings that demonstrate that most nurses are involved in recurrent ethical problems, institutions are not always able to effectively support nursing care professionals. The limited availability of ethics consultation services and traditional nursing training fails to meet the frequent and strong requests by health workers to support their ethical dilemmas. A questionnaire was administered to 374 nurses attending a specialist training and a lifetime learning programme in Italy. The respondents reported a high frequency of ethically sensitive situations, and they described the poor development of ethics support and a scarcity of ethics training programmes. The results suggest the importance of promoting ethics services that include consultation and ethics training. A need for systematic ethics educational activities was identified for improving the capacity of nurses to manage ethical issues in patient care.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine and Public Health, University of L'Aquila, Via S. Salvatore, Edificio Delta 6, 67100 L'Aquila, Italy.
authors.forename: Cinzia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Leuter
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Petrucci
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mattei
authors.forename: Gianpietro
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tabassi
authors.forename: Loreto
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lancia
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D033061:Ethics Consultation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020380:Needs Assessment; D009726:Nurses / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009786:Occupational Health Services / Q000592:standards; D012944:Social Support; D013041:Specialties, Nursing / Q000193:education*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult