Their patients come first, often even before themselves.

On January 13th, the Gallup poll released its data for the most honest and ethical professions as ranked by the public.

“Three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement.”

As a nurse, this is of course a great honor to continue to receive this recognition from the public for over two decades straight.

Nurses operate according to the American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics. The code of ethics has 9 provisions. The first provision is:

“The nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person.”

A core principle of patient care delivery is providing individualized care. To deliver individualized care, nurses come to know their patients.

Individualized care differentiates the patient experience from feeling like a number or diagnosis to that of feeling like you are a person who is a patient in that moment.

We learn the role of ethics in nursing early in our undergraduate nursing educational preparation and it is continually reinforced throughout clinical rotations and in practice.

Ethics often supersede regulation requirements. What does this mean?

What may be possible to do through regulations (or the lack thereof), may not necessarily be ethical. Therefore, extra protections will often be taken on top of regulatory protections.

This will especially be of consideration for forthcoming artificial intelligence (AI) tools that aim to support consumers with answers to health related questions.

Another example may be the expectation to turn a patient every two hours. That would be the minimum. A nurse may find that another patient may need to be turned more frequently to optimally heal or relieve pain.

Nurses take great pride in providing optimal care for patients and to do so in an ethical manner. Their patients come first, often even before themselves. The public’s recognition of trust in nurses is of great value.

A link to the article from Gallup on this year’s released rankings can be found here.

~ Tiffany Kelley

PhD MBA RN NI-BC FNAP

Founder & CEO,

Nightingale Apps