Abstract

This paper was designed to explore the relationships of three role conception types (the professional, bureaucratic and service role conceptions) to the ethical behaviour of student nurses from the apprenticeship and degree nursing programmes in Hong Kong. The effect of role discrepancy on ethical behaviour will also be explored. A nonprobability convenience sampling of 140 certificate students from a hospital-based training course and 81 degree nursing students from a tertiary programme were selected. Role conception and role discrepancy were measured by the modified Nursing Role Conception scale originally developed by Corwin. For ethical behaviour, the Judgement About Nursing Decisions scale developed by Ketefian was used. Multiple regression analyses showed that the ideal professional role conception was a significant predictor, accounting for 17% of the variance in the ideal ethical score of the degree students. Actual service role conception was a better predictor of the actual ethical score, explaining 10% and 14% of its variance for the certificate and degree students respectively. Professional and bureaucratic role discrepancies together were found to have a negative effect on the actual ethical behaviour of the degree students. These results suggest that professional values that have been developed through socialization in nurse education programmes could benefit patients only when degree students, in particular, could adapt successfully to the demands of bureaucratic organization.