The results obtained revealed ethical sensitivity of ethical leaders in five categories, including sensitivity to care, sensitivity to errors, sensitivity in communications, sensitivity in decision making, and sensitivity to ethical practice.
The first domain is sensitivity to care. The present study results showed that ethical leaders are sensitive to patient’s condition and caring issues. They frequently remind other nurses about implementation of nursing cares and being sensitive to patient’s condition. Furthermore, they consider problems faced by patients and try to solve them. Given that care is core of nursing performance, perhaps ethical sensitivity of ethical leaders could be considered related to their sense of dutifulness; an attribute
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The curriculum of nursing bachelor’s courses in Iran lacks ethical education, such that although ethical issues are raised in various subjects, a consistent program for teaching professional ethics or ethical decision making does not exist. Besides, “professional ethics” unit was removed from the curriculum in recent years, and it is now briefly included in another subject as “history of nursing development and ethics” [46-48]. Given the importance and effect of educating ethics at nursing schools in ethical decision making and performance of future nurses, it is essential that this area be reconsidered [47, 49, 50]. Another finding in the present study relates to the role of ethical leader in training ethical decision making to others, and the definition of ethical leadership provided at the beginning of this article indicates development of ethical performance by ethical leader through ethical decision making [3]. According to Brown et al., Ethical leader take into account consequences of their decisions, and make fair choices, that can be observed and imitated by others …show more content…
Understanding and awareness of ethical issues have been referred to in various studies as one of the attributes of an ethical leader [3, 20, 22, 33, 34]. Furthermore, the ability to differentiate between ethical and unethical cases has also been confirmed in other studies as part of ethical sensitivity [4, 5, 7, 35, 36]. Kim et al. believe ethical sensitivity requires insight, intuition, and moral knowing, and an ability to identify moral issues in various situations[9]. On the other hand, participants believed that ethical leaders adhere to ethical principles and values such as honesty, confidentiality and justice. Honesty [3, 20, 22, 31, 34, 37], or justice [3, 20, 33] of ethical leaders have been cited in various studies. It seems that ethical leaders are sensitive to their observation by nurses, and practically teach these principles and values to other nurses through awareness and adherence to ethical principles and