The American public say nurses have the highest honesty and ethical standards according to the annual Gallup poll of trust in professions.
Eighty percent of Americans say nurses have “very high” or “high” standards of honesty and ethics. The results for nurses are 15 points above any other profession. Nursing has been voted as the most honest and ethical profession in America for the past 13 years.
Gallup has been asking to rate the honest and ethics of various professions annually since 1990, and periodically since 1976. Gallup says “nurses have topped the list each year since they were first included in 1999.”
Medical doctors and pharmacists tie this year for second place at 65%, with police officers and clergy approaching 50%.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) note the survey supports their yearlong campaign to highlight the importance of nursing ethics and their impact on patients and healthcare quality in the U.S.
“All nurses share the critical responsibility to adhere to the highest ethical standards in their practice to ensure they provide superior health care to patients and society,” said ANA President Pamela F. Cipriano, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN. “ANA is calling 2015 the Year of Ethics to highlight ethics as an essential component of everyday nursing practice and reinforce the trust patients have that nurses will protect their health and safety, and advocate on their behalf.”
Recently, ANA completed a revision of its Code of Ethics for Nurses that serves as a guide to the nursing profession to uplift the best interests of patients, families, and communities. The new Code reflects many changes and evolutions in health care and considers the most current ethical challenges nurses face in practice.
The revised code will be released early 2015. The revision involved a four-year process in which a committee received and evaluated comments on ethics issues from thousands of nurses.
Via: ANA Source: Gallup