Today more than ever, nurses must keep pace with the technological revolution in patient care. Ethical concerns are inseparable from nursing concerns about the quality of patient care and treatment. This study examined ethical problems from the perspective of nurses in a variety of clinical settings and geographical locations. The specific objective of this correlational/comparative study were to: (1) compare and contrast the responses of nurses in a randomly selected sample in the following areas--perception of the degree of difficulty and the frequency of selected ethical problems in clinical practice, demographic data, education, clinical experience, specialty, and position, factors influencing ethical decisions, job satisfaction, and type, size and location of employing institution, (2) determine the extent and nature of relationships between the responses of nurses in the aforementioned variables, and (3) develop differential descriptions of selected subgroups in the study regarding the aforementioned variables.

Data were collected utilizing a 52-item questionnaire. Three hundred and fifty-two nurses completed the survey questionnaire. Statistical analysis included mean averages, correlation coefficients, analysis of variance and qualitative identification of descriptive categories of data.

Significant findings of the study were as follows: religious influence and family were most frequently cited as influences on code of ethics; most have never had to compromise ethical standards; most were afraid of harming a patient or being ashamed of themselves if they had to compromise ethical standards. The majority of the respondents had been involved in an ethical problem within the last year. There were significant low level, negative relationships between education, years of experience, factors influencing ethical choice, age, position, job satisfaction, and degree of difficulty and incidence of ethical problems. Narrative responses to the final question were categorized into six descriptive types of ethical cases. The most frequently cited type of case dealt with quality of life issues and decisions to resuscitate the terminally ill.