Nursing Values and Ethics: Principles Every Nurse Should Know

Nurses make decisions every day that affect patients’ health, safety, dignity, and trust. Some choices are straightforward. Others require nurses to weigh competing needs, responsibilities, and ethical considerations while working in complex healthcare environments.

Professional values provide a foundation for patient care. The American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics establishes standards that guide nurses' responsibilities to patients, colleagues, communities, and the profession itself.

This post explores the values that shape patient care, the principles reflected in the ANA Code of Ethics, and ways to apply them when difficult decisions arise.

What Values Should a Nurse Have?

As an experienced nurse, you already draw on professional values in your everyday practice. They influence how you respond when a patient’s wishes conflict with a family member’s expectations, how you advocate for someone whose voice is being overlooked, and how you consider the whole person when making decisions about care.

Compassion, respect, integrity, and accountability provide a framework for navigating those situations. They call for attention to each patient’s circumstances and autonomy, honest communication, sound professional judgment, and a willingness to take responsibility for the decisions you make.

These nursing values and beliefs become especially important when something goes wrong. Suppose, for example, that you make a medication error. Accountability requires more than recognizing the mistake. You have a responsibility to take appropriate action, including reporting the error so that the healthcare team can respond to the patient’s needs.

These principles are not limited to dramatic dilemmas. They influence everyday choices about communication, privacy, patient advocacy, professional responsibilities, and relationships with colleagues.

The 7 Core Values of the Nursing Profession

The ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses is organized into 10 provisions, but several broad nursing values and responsibilities appear throughout the Code. The following seven principles reflect key themes within it:

1. Compassion and respect: Treat each person in your care as someone with inherent dignity, worth, and individual needs and circumstances.¹ This principle also calls for honoring patients’ right to make decisions and providing the information they need to make informed choices about their care.²
2. Commitment to the recipient of care: Put the interests of the person or population receiving care at the center of your professional decisions, whether you serve an individual, family, group, community, or population.³ You must also address conflicts of interest that could interfere with that priority.⁴
3. Privacy and trust: Safeguard personal and health information and share it only as appropriate for care or otherwise permitted.⁵ You also advocate for patients’ rights, health, and safety,⁶ particularly when they are vulnerable or unable to advocate fully for themselves.
4. Responsibility and accountability: Take ownership of your professional judgments, decisions, and actions.⁷ When you delegate nursing activities, you must determine whether delegation is appropriate and ensure that the person performing the activity has the necessary competence.⁸
5. Integrity and professional competence: Maintain the knowledge and skills your role requires while adhering to the standards and principles that govern your practice.⁹ Continued learning helps you stay current as healthcare practices, technologies, and patient needs evolve.¹⁰
6. Creating an ethical environment: Help foster a workplace in which policies, practices, and professional relationships uphold appropriate standards of care.¹¹ When conditions or behaviors threaten those standards or patient well-being, you have a responsibility to address the concern.¹²
7. Contributions that advance nursing: Use your knowledge and experience to strengthen the field through research, scholarly inquiry, standards development, or health policy.¹³ This work can expand the profession’s knowledge base and improve the environments in which care is provided.

Together, these principles can help you consider your responsibilities to patients, colleagues, yourself, and the nursing profession. Ethical standards continue to evolve as healthcare changes, making familiarity with the current ANA Code of Ethics an important part of your practice.

Navigating Ethical Challenges in Practice

Ethical challenges can arise anywhere you provide care. You might encounter disagreement among a patient, family members, and members of the healthcare team about a treatment decision. Limited staffing or resources may create difficult questions about how to prioritize care. Privacy concerns may emerge when relatives request information the individual has not authorized you to share.

Other situations involve your obligations to colleagues and the profession. If you observe unsafe or unethical conduct, you may need to determine how to raise the concern through appropriate channels. A mistake or omission may require prompt reporting and action. Conflicts between workplace demands and a patient’s needs can also require careful professional judgment.

Experience can deepen your judgment, but continued education matters as well. Changes in technology, healthcare delivery, laws, policies, and professional standards can introduce new ethical questions. As you continue developing your knowledge, you can become better equipped to recognize concerns, seek appropriate guidance, and participate thoughtfully in decisions that affect patients and healthcare teams.

Strong nursing values also shape workplace culture. Respectful communication, accountability, and a willingness to address concerns can help create an environment in which patients and healthcare professionals are treated with dignity. These principles influence everyday interactions as well as responses to difficult situations.

Build on the Values That Shape Your Nursing Practice

Your nursing values influence the care you provide, the relationships you build, and the decisions you make throughout your career. As your responsibilities grow, a broader understanding of professional practice can help you contribute to patient care and healthcare teams in new ways.

Oklahoma City University’s Kramer School of Nursing offers an online RN-BSN program designed for registered nurses who want to build on their education and professional experience. The program emphasizes the Kramer Way: caring, kindness, and respect.

Through asynchronous coursework, you can continue working while developing knowledge you’ll apply on the job. Faculty expertise and interaction with peers bring varied perspectives to your studies.

The online RN-BSN can be completed in as few as 12 months. Applicants must hold an active, unencumbered U.S. RN license and have graduated from an associate degree RN program approved by a state board of nursing, along with meeting the program’s other admissions requirements.

A BSN can broaden your understanding of the cultural, political, economic, and social factors that influence patient care while helping you develop the reasoning and analytical skills that can serve you throughout your nursing career. To learn more, contact us directly or schedule a call with an admissions outreach advisor today.