The relationship between moral sensitivity and professional values and ethical decision-making in nursing students

More researchers have paid attention to the ethical decision-making in nursing worldwidely due to the increasing complexity of ethical issues and dilemmas. Ethical decision-making ability is regarded as one of the core competences of nursing practice and has the potential to resolve ethical issues. It is important to identify the key variables related to ethical decision-making and understand their relationship between them respectively. It is also helpful to design interventions to promote nursing students' ability to resolve ethical dilemmas. This study aims to examine the relationship between moral sensitivity, professional values and ethical decision-making respectively, and to explore whether professional values have mediating effect on the relationship between moral sensitivity and ethical decision-making among nursing undergraduates in Chinese nursing education context. This study is a cross-sectional descriptive correlational design. 263 nursing undergraduates from Nursing and Health School, Zhengzhou University in Henan province of China participated in the study and received the investigation. Their ethical decision-making, moral sensitivity and professional values were measured through the following three questionnaires, including the Judgement About Nursing Decision (JAND), Chinese Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire-Revised Version (MSQ-R-CV) and Chinese Nurses' Professional Values Scale–Revised Version (NPVS-R-CV). The data were processed and analysed by SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 24.0. The statistical methods included descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson's correlation analyses and structural equation modeling. Moral sensitivity is positively correlated with ethical decision-making (P < 0.01). Professional values is positively correlated with ethical decision-making (P < 0.01) and also has a mediating effect on the relationship between moral sensitivity and ethical decision-making (P < 0.01). The investigation contributes to a broader understanding of the factors that influence nursing students' ethical decision-making. Developing ethics education around nursing students' professional values and moral sensitivity can improve their ethical decision-making ability.