Perception of Palestinian Undergraduate Nursing and Midwifery Students About Professional Values: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Professional values provide a context for appraising beliefs and attitudes that guide behaviors and considered as standards for acceptable actions by professionals toward providing safe patient care. Aim: This study aimed to assess professional values among Palestinian undergraduate nursing and midwifery students and examine the relationship between students’ demographics and professional values. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional design was used in this study. A convenient sample of 370 undergraduate nursing and midwifery students from the Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine completed an electronic version of the revised nursing professional values scale, which consists of 26 items covering five domains (caring, trust, justice, activism and professionalism). Results: Age of participants ranged between 18 and 36 years with a mean of 21.1 years. The majority of them were females (60.7%), regular students (87.3%), were enrolled in the nursing program (95.4%). The top caring statement rated by the participants was “Maintain confidentiality of patient” (4.41) while the statement “Protect rights of participants in research” received the lowest score (3.62). The mean total scores of the domains of revised nursing professional values scale ranged between 3.610 for the “professionalism” domain and 4.133 for the “justice” domain. The variables related to age, gender, grades cumulative average, study year did not impact the scores of the revised nursing professional values scale or its domains. Conclusion: This study found that professional values were relatively high among Palestinian nursing and midwifery students. Justice and caring domains were rated highest by participants, while activism and professionalism domains were rated low. These results should alert nursing educators to their roles in improving these values among nursing and midwifery students. This could be approached by empowering, role modeling and engagement of students in more activities to enhance these values.