MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL OF FAMILY MEDICINE • VOLUME 7, ISSUE 10 103 WORLD FAMILY MEDICINE/MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL OF FAMILY MEDICINE VOLUME 15 ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2017 POPULATION AND COMMUNITY STUDIES Implementation status of moral codes among nurses Maryam Ban (1) Hojat Zareh Houshyari Khah (2) Marzieh Ghassemi (1) Sajedeh Mousaviasl (1) Mohammad Khavasi (1) Narjes Asadi (3) Mohammad Amin Harizavi (1) Saeedeh Elhami (1) (1) Abadan School of Medical Sciences, Abadan, Iran (2) Abadan school of medical sciences, Abadan, Iran and Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Guilan, Iran (3) Baghiatallah Hospital, Tehran, Iran Correspondence: Saeedeh Elhami Student Research Committee, Abadan School of Medical Sciences, Abadan, Iran Email: S_elhami@yahoo.com Abstract Background and objective: Nurses should have an appropriate level of ethical development to per- form their daily care. Ethical codes should be un- derstood by nurses and used in each dimension of nursing practice. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the implementation status of nurses’ ethical codes. Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was car- ried out on 202 nurses working in internal and surgi- cal wards using easy sampling in educational hos- pitals of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Abadan. The implementation status of ethical codes was in- vestigated using a researcher-made questionnaire and the obtained data were analyzed using SPSS ver. 16. Results: There was a statistically signifcant differ- ence between the level of ethical performance of nurses with cases such as organizational positions, work shift, academic education, and ethics retrain- ing courses and work experience (p< 0.005). This difference was not observed in relation to gender, marital status, educational degree, history of pre- senting complaints and job satisfaction and the workplace (p>0.005). Conclusion: Results of this study showed that nurses should frstly recognize the dimensions and ethical issues in their profession for the ethi- cal performance of professional nursing; therefore, it is recommended to maximize the ef fciency and quality of health care by educating the medical staff and raising their awareness of professional ethics. Key words: Professional Ethics, Code of Ethics, Nurses Please cite this article as: Ban M. et al. Implementa- tion status of moral codes among nurses. World Family Medicine. 2017; 15(8):103-110. DOI: 10.5742/MEWFM.2017.93063