Ričardas Butėnas, Vilma Žydžiūnaitė
Abstract
Background. Nurses work in health care system and in their activities aspect of values becomes crucial. The nurse becomes a leader in interdisciplinary team and has the unique possibility and the moral duty to serve as an advocate of the patients and their families in important moments of their lives. The focus of the research is the values in regulation documents on nursing. The research issue. Particular values and duties that are mentioned in documentation of medical practitioners and declarations are inseparable of nurses’ activities, but between the nursing practice reality and the norms exists the gap. Research question. What values presuppose documentation content on nursing activities at national and international context? Aim is to distinguish the assumptions of value expression in documents on nursing activities. Sample consisted of eleven documents regarding nursing activity and twenty one articles. Methods. For data analysis was applied the latent qualitative content analysis by Cormack. Results. The analysis of documents on nursing activities, revealed the assumptions of instrumental values. But the content of documents lacks the assumptions of moral, aesthetic and religious value factors that are premises for general values. These are oriented intercultural competencies and value-related competencies of nurses. Conclusion. The documentation of nursing activities at the national and international content implies instrumental values, which focus on the general competence of the nurse, but they are only a part of the values that are important to nursing profession.
Keyword(s): values; nursing ethics; nurse; patient; competence
DOI: 10.5200/sm-hs.2013.030
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