The impact of healthcare workers' ethical codes on job satisfaction and performance

Due to its structure, which directly affects human life and quality of life, the health sector is based not only on technical knowledge and skills, but also on a strong understanding of professional ethics. In this context, shaping the behaviors of healthcare professionals in line with ethical principles plays a key role in ensuring the sustainability of service quality at both individual and institutional levels. Ethics is not just an abstract discussion of what is right and wrong, but a set of concrete values and principles for practice. These principles serve as a guiding compass for decision-making processes, especially in occupational groups that are in direct contact with human life. Ethical dilemmas in healthcare often require employees to balance both their individual value systems and organizational expectations. The professional ethics codes that come into play at this point are the rules created to reduce the uncertainties that healthcare professionals may encounter while performing their duties, to clarify professional boundaries and to ensure that the relationship with the patient turns into a trust-based structure. Ethical codes are normative structures that aim not only to protect the rights of patients, but also to protect the psychological and professional integrity of employees. In this context, while adherence to ethical codes increases the quality of health services, it can also positively affect the respect, commitment and job satisfaction of employees to their own profession. The adoption of ethical principles in the corporate culture and their integration into business processes not only supports individual professional ethics, but also directly affects basic indicators such as organizational performance, productivity and employee satisfaction. Therefore, it is of great importance to investigate the extent to which ethical codes are internalized in order to increase the quality of health services and to ensure a sustainable development in both job satisfaction and job performance levels of healthcare professionals. In this context, this research aims to reveal the effects of healthcare workers' perceptions of ethical codes on job satisfaction and job performance The research was carried out on the basis of the relational screening model with a total of 404 healthcare professionals working in Istanbul between 10.02.2025 and 10.03.2025. The data were collected by questionnaire method and SPSS 24.0 statistical program was used in the analysis process. Within the scope of the research, ethics committee permission was obtained from Istanbul Gelisim University Ethics Committee. Reliability analyses, factor analyses, t-test, ANOVA, correlation and regression analyses were used in the analysis of the data. According to the findings, it has been determined that the ethical code perceptions of healthcare workers have a significant and positive effect on job satisfaction and job performance. While the "patient rights and privacy", "professional care", "ethical dilemma" and "justice-equality" dimensions of the ethical codes had a significant effect on job satisfaction and performance, only the "spirit of solidarity" dimension did not have a significant effect on job satisfaction. The results of the correlation analysis show that there are positive relationships between ethical codes and job satisfaction (r=0.213; p<0.05) and job performance (r=0.500; p<0.05). In the analyses made in terms of demographic variables, significant differences were found between the variable of job satisfaction and status (p=0.001) and education level (p=0.036). Similarly, significant differences were found in the variable of job performance with the level of education (p=0.012) and the duration of work in the institution (p=0.048). This study revealed that the integration of ethical principles into the corporate culture in health institutions is a supportive factor not only in terms of ethics but also in terms of employee motivation and service efficiency. The results obtained are expected to be a guide in terms of directing health policies and developing in-house ethical practices.