Professional Values and Related Factors Among Nurses Employed in South Wollo Zone Public Hospitals

Nurses require good knowledge about professional values to provide quality nursing care. Implementing professional values in clinical areas improves the quality of patients care. Even though applying professional values had significant impact on the continuity and quality of nursing care, there is scarcity of study on professional values in Ethiopia.

The study was aimed to identify the level of nurses' professional values and related factors among nurses employed in South Wollo Zone public hospitals.

A hospital-based, cross-sectional study was conducted among 422 nurses working in South Wollo Zone public hospitals from May to June 2023. Participants were selected by using simple random sampling technique. Nursing Professional Values Scale-Revised was used to measure the professional values. Data entry was performed using Epidata version 4.6.1 and then exported to Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 23.0 for analysis. To identify the strength of association between outcome and independent variables, binary logistic regression was applied. From the final model, those variables having p < .05 and adjusted odds ratio with 95% confidence interval were reported as statistically significant.

The mean (±standard deviation) age was 32.29 (±7.01), with 63% of nurses being males. Less than half, 47.9% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 43.2, 53.4), of nurses had good professional values. Monthly income (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]  = 0.33; 95% CI: 0.16, 0.72), position (AOR  = 0.22, 95% CI: 0.13, 0.38), training (AOR = 0.56, 95% CI: 0.34, 0.92), promotion (AOR = 3.06, 95% CI: 1.84, 5.1), and respect from one's profession (AOR = 0.48, 95% CI: 0.29, 0.78) were statistically associated with professional values.

The majority of nurses demonstrated poor professional values. Professional values were substantially correlated with monthly income, position, training, promotion, and professional esteem. In order to ensure the quality and continuity of patient care, we advised nurses to be aware of nursing professional values and apply them in clinical settings.