Awareness of Nurses on Legal and Ethical Aspects of Nursing in Selected Hospitals of Lalitpur

Nurses on Legal and ethical aspects Nepal

Abstract

Background: Nurses are highly vulnerable to face ethical and legal issues as they deal with human life and death. In Nepal, the accusation of malpractice and negligence is rising every day in the health sector. Various studies have shown that knowledge of nurses in ethical and legal aspects is unsatisfying which is further increasing ethical dilemmas and legal issues in health sector.

 Objectives: To assess the knowledge level of nurses on legal and ethical aspects of nursing and find out the association between knowledge and selected variables (Age, Years of experience, Educational Level, In-service education, Area of Work) in selected hospitals of the Lalitpur district.

Methodology: It is a descriptive, cross-sectional design to find out knowledge among 168 nurses working in the Sumeru, Sumeru City & Ganeshman Singh Memorial Hospital of Lalitpur district. A non -probability purposive sampling technique was used. A self-administered with a semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Descriptive analysis and chi-square test were performed using SPSS software version 20.0

Findings: Overall, 59.5% of the respondents had adequate and 40.5% had inadequate knowledge of ethical and legal aspects.   There was no significant association between the knowledge score and the selected variables.

Conclusions: More than half of the respondents had adequate knowledge of ethical and legal aspects of nursing but still a significant proportion of the sample had inadequate knowledge. The present knowledge level of nurses emphasizes the need for making aware of these topics.

Recommendation: Large-scaled research and comparative study can be conducted to draw conclusions.