A Study on the Changes in Ethical Values of New Nursing Students

Objectives: After understanding the level of ethical values of freshmen nursing students, comparing to the previous studies,and checking the trend of changes, this study intends to suggest the direction of the future ethical education. Methods/Statistical Analysis: To understand the level of ethical values among the university students, the freshmen were selected who had no clinical experiences. The survey sheets were distributed by the investigator and collected after self-report. 192 copies were analyzed. Findings: There has been a tendency of principle of duty from the ethical values of students in the record of 86.10±8.94 (25.00˜125.00) followed by 24.02±4.59 (8.00˜40.00) in human life area, 25.39±3.98 (7.00˜35.00) in nurse-client relationship area, 20.86±2.73 (6.00˜30.00) in nurse-nursing task relationship area, and 15.82±2.35 (4.00˜20.00) in nurse-colleague relationship area. Therefore, the tendency of principle of duty been confirmed in all the areas. According to the changes in the period from ethical values, the area of human life has represented relatively upward tendency, while the nurse-client relationship area and nurse-nursing task relationship area maintained a bit upward tendency.The area of nurse-colleague relationship represented downward tendency. In the correlation of sub-categories of ethical values, the human life area and nurse-nursing task relationship area were positively related (.151 p<.05) followed by a strong positive correlation between the nurse-client relationship area and the nurse-nursing task relationship area (.397 p<.01), between the nurse-client relationship area and nurse-colleague relationship area (.508 p<.01), and between nurse-nursing task relationship area and nurse-colleague relationship area (.499 p<.01). Upon the results of ethical values differentiation by general characteristics, the significant differences were shown in religion (.043 p<.05) and satisfaction level on Nursing(.015 p<.05). Improvement/Application: According to the result of research, this study suggests the development of ethics education program through ethical cases related to an issue of life sanctity, single mothers related to artificial abortion, death with dignity, and error of medical service providers.