Values held by nursing faculty and students in a university setting.

An ever-expanding wealth of life-preserving high technology and scientific knowledge, coupled with expanded autonomy of nurses, has created for them ethical and moral dilemmas. As society's values are changing, manifested by an accelerated crime rate, malfeasance in high places, and seeming social indifference, have nurses maintained their ethical equilibrium? This article reports the findings of a descriptive study that examined the professional and personal values of nursing faculty in a large midwestern school of nursing and compares them with those of generic students entering the program. Faculty demonstrated a significantly higher commitment to the American Association of College of Nursing professional value, human dignity, than to the values of equality (P less than .05) and esthetics (P less than .01). Also, there was a significantly higher commitment to altruism than esthetics (P less than .05). Results showed that entering students were more alike on personal values (Rokeach Values Survey) than different from the faculty who teach them.