간호사의 생명윤리의식

Although the studies related to nursing ethics which have been reported in Korea mostly concerns the area between nurses and the subjects, the area where nurses experience most seriously in ethical dilemma has become the area of human life. The study was conducted from October 4 to 15, 2005 with 312 nurses currently working at a hospital in D city. The objective of this study is to examine how clinical nurses as medical practitioners understand specifically about the ethics related to the beginning of life, the ethics related to the end of life. The degree of bioethics awareness of nurses showed relatively high and statistically significant in: (1) age, educational status and religion on demographic characteristics; (2) the degree of establishing one's own ethical value system and the ethical decision-making criteria in ethical characteristics; and (3) satisfaction on nursing profession, application of ethical principles in nursing practice and interest in participating in ethics education in nursing characteristics. Therefore, it will further urge the interests of nurses on bioethics as well as serve as basic data for establishing the future nursing ethics education program.