The Importance of Professional Values from Clinical Nurses' Perspective

Introduction: Values become necessary to direct nurses' professional behavior as a dignified profession. Objective: This research aimed to identify Indonesian nurses' professional values and explore essential professional value items based on clinical nurses' perceptions. Methods: This research used mixed method research. As many as 517 nurses filled out the Nursing Professional Value Scale Revised (NPVS-R) questionnaire from April to May 2019 and ten clinical nurses were included in the semi-structured interview. Results: The professional values of nurses were 97.30 ± 14.15. As many as 74.3% of nurses perceived the professional values of nurses at a high level. There was a significant difference between education level and nurse caring (P value 0.001 <0.05). The most dominant dimension of nurse professional values was the caring dimension of 56.55 ± 8.19. Three themes were obtained from the qualitative research, namely: Caring, Professionalism and Trust. Conclusions: As the findings suggest, we need to pay more attention to professional values, especially professionalism and trust for the nurses to work in today's complex healthcare context.