Relationship of the Hospital Ethical Climate with Nurses' Attitude to Interprofessional Collaboration

Introduction: Hospital ethical climate is a kind of organisational climate consisting of interpersonal relationships between treatment personnel and personnel communication with patients and their families. Collaboration between physician and nurse is a prominent and important aspect of professional ethics and designed to achieve a common goal of patient care. Ethical climate that reflects persons' perceptions of their organisation and is one of the important and influential factors affecting the attitudes and behaviours of employees in the workplace, can be influenced by the interprofessional collaboration between physicians and nurses. Aim: To investigate the correlation of hospital ethics with nurses' attitude towards the interprofessiona I collaboration between physicians and nurses. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive study, 196 nurses working in the intensive care units of selected hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, who were eligible to enter the research, were selected by available method. To collect data, Olson's ethical climate questionnaire and attitude toward the collaboration of physicians and nurses Jefferson scale were used. Due to the fact that the validity of the questionnaire was verified and confirmed in numerous domestic researches in Iran. it was not re-examined. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to verify their reliability. Results: The average score of the ethical climate of the hospital from the nurses' viewpoint was 3.26 +/- 0.56, which indicates an unfavourable level of understanding of the ethical climate among the nurses. The mean score of nurses' attitude towards the collaboration of physician and nurse was 51.17 +/- 4.98, which is in the positive level. The results of statistical analysis showed that there was no statistically significant relationship between the dimensions of nurses 'perception of the ethical climate of the hospital and the nurses' attitude toward the collaboration between the physician and the nurse (r=-0.26, p-value=0.695). Conclusion: Considering that collaboration between physician and nurses is one of the important features in providing care, it is suggested that training be provided to develop the morale of participation and cooperation in educational and clinical settings. Also, considering the importance of nurses' perception of the ethical climate of the hospital, it is suggested that ethical workshops with the aim of familiarising all employees with the importance of the concept of organisational ethics in hospitals should be held.