Factors Affecting Ethical Sensitivity Among Nursing Students: Secondary Data Analysis

Ethical sensitivity is a basic competency required for nursing students to work as professionals who will care patients in the clinical field after graduation. Therefore, efforts are needed to improve the knowledge on ethical sensitivity in undergraduate education. This study aimed to identify the demographic characteristics that influence ethical sensitivity among nursing students. This study was a secondary analysis that referred to a previous work measuring ethical sensitivity in nursing students. The participants were 128 nursing students, who had experienced clinical practicums. Among the participants, those who were third-year (t=2.345, 95% CI=[1.24, 14.64], p=0.021), female (t=2.635, 95% CI=[3.65, 25.69], p=0.009) and were satisfaction with major (t=-2.389, 95% CI=[-16.54, -1.50], p=0.019) consistently reported significantly higher mean scores on ethical sensitivity. The explanatory power of the model was 13.3%. Gender (Exp (B)=0.875, 95% CI=[0.804, 0.952], p=0.002) and year at universtiy were the strongest predictors of ethical sensitivity (Exp (B)=0.921, 95% CI=[0.873, 0.971], p=0.002). Based on the results, an appropriate ethics education that considers the following issues should be provided for undergraduate nursing students: both genders' perspectives, seniors' further development, and students experiencing low satisfaction with their major. Future nursing education should consider these individual demographic characteristics to develop nursing students' ethical sensitivity that will further affect their ethical behavior and ultimately improve the quality of nursing.