Nurses privacy attitudes and ethical problems experienced regarding privacy

The study aims to examine nurses' attitudes towards privacy and the ethical issues they experience related to privacy. This descriptive study was conducted with 326 nurses working at Düzce Atatürk State Hospital between November 2023 and December 2023. The data for the research were collected using the 'Personal Information Form,' which includes the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants, and the 'Nursing Patient Privacy Scale,' developed to determine the attitudes and behaviors of nurses regarding patient privacy. In the data analysis, the Mann-Whitney U Test was used to examine the relationships between sociodemographic questions and scale scores, and the Kruskal-Wallis test was used for questions with three or more groups. When a significant difference was found in the Kruskal-Wallis test, multiple comparison tests were conducted to determine between which groups the difference existed, and Bonferroni-adjusted significance values were considered in the evaluation of these tests. The reliability of the scales was determined using Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient. In the analyses, a statistical significance level of p<0.05 was accepted. It was determined that 84% of the participating nurses were female, 52.4% were aged between 26-35 years with an average age of 33.68±8.49, 63.6% were married, 50.5% had children, 72.3% were university graduates, 34.5% had 6 months to 5 years of work experience, and the average work experience in the profession was 11.65±9.20 years. Additionally, 31.6% worked in intensive care units, 53.9% worked both night and day shifts, 53.4% worked more than 41 hours per week, 71.8% chose the profession willingly, 91.7% had received ethics training, and 67.7% of those who received ethics training had received it during their undergraduate and postgraduate education. It was determined that 98.4% of the nurses took care of patient privacy in their units, 67.2% thought that healthcare workers paid attention to patient privacy, 74.5% had not violated patient privacy in their professional life, 63% had not witnessed any healthcare worker violating patient privacy, and 69.8% stated that there were regulations in their institution to prevent privacy violations. The total average score of the participating nurses on the Nursing Patient Privacy Scale was 4.58±0.57. The average scores of the participants on the Nursing Patient Privacy Scale and its sub-dimensions were found to be very high. Participants received the highest average score from the Physical Privacy sub-dimension and the lowest average from the Gender-related Privacy sub-dimension. In conclusion, it is recommended to organize training to increase the knowledge and awareness of nurses about privacy and privacy violations both ethically and legally, to take necessary measures to reduce situations that negatively affect patient privacy and to plan studies with larger sample groups using qualitative and mixed methods.