Somaya Abou Abdou
Suez Canal University, Egypt
Title: Staff Nurses’Attitudes toward Ethical Issues in Psychiatric Inpatient care
Biography
Biography: Somaya Abou Abdou
Abstract
Mental illness is a significant problem across countries and worldwide. People with mental illness need to be treated and rehabbed by mental health professionals & Psychiatric nurses are a group of mental health professionals who take actively important roles in providing care for people with mental illness. The aim of this study is to identify the ethical beliefs of psychiatric nurses and ethical issues encountered. A cross-sectional descriptive survey study design was used with a self-administered questionnaire to a sample of 364 nurses who volunteered to take part in the study from the five psychiatric hospitals states in five different census regions of Egypt. The results indicate that most of the psychiatric nurses seemed to have a general understanding of an ‘ethical challenge’ since they started to give care for mental patient. They were able to present a broad variety of rich descriptions of situations in which they experienced either small or big ethical challenges, while ethical codes of nursing in psychiatric inpatient units are inadequate and standards of care are poor. On the other hand excessive workload, working conditions, lack of supervision, are the main factors leads to ethical issues. Conclusion: that in the field of psychiatric hospitals some problems perceived as ethical were eventually described as malpractice and there are needs for education strategies for clinical nurses and nursing organizations to improve nurses' ethical problems.